Historically High - Hannibal

Episode Date: March 27, 2024

Hannibal Barca or much like Cher and Bono, is known by just Hannibal, was a Carthaginian General who decided to dedicate his life to destroying Rome. Also much like Cher changed the music game, Hannibal did the same for warfare. The man was a tactical genius and came the closest to bringing down the Roman Empire since it began 520+ years earlier. He had the balls to march his army, a ragtag group of killers from multiple countries, including War Elephants, yes it's a thing and we discuss it in depth, across the Alps in order to attack the soft unprotected rear of Italy. Mi Scusi. He was so successful Rome had to change the entire way it fought just to try and stop him. Why are you still reading this, click the button and let's get started. Support the show Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What's up everybody? Welcome back to class. Thanks for joining us on another week. I'm excited. This is, oh boy, howdy. Do we have one for you today? Just to explain how big this day is, Chris brought the projector back. Yes. We got the projector to look at some battle maps. I'm not going to lie, this is exactly why I bought it. There may have been, you may have had other plans for this, but this is exactly, it's four episodes. imagery. Oh, so nice. And I'm going to try not to get too caught up where I'm actually just talking straight at you and you can

see something. Yeah. I'm going to try to keep it on the rails and explain it to where you find folks listening. Know exactly what's going on. The man, over here to my left, his shoe game is slicker than a bucket of K.Y. His study skills are harder than a

13-year-old watching red shoe diaries while their parents are asleep. We traded our washing machine to get him. He's the most Carly Smoker, I know. That's Professor Adam. That was lovely. I wrote it down, so I didn't forget it. Sometimes you've got to do it.

Just so we can get out in front of this, and I don't know if you need to make the same declaration, but we are talking about Hannibal today. I did not know quite as much about Hannibal. The sectional character, Hannibal Lecter, which I think some people think that, like, when someone says Hannibal, that's who they're referring to because it's so popular. but no. Let me get it good here. We are talking about

Hannibal Barkas. A man who is so infamous in history, it's just one name. No one even knows him as Hannibal Barker, Barker, Barkas, or whatever it is. When you say Hannibal, it's just Hannibal. Yeah, I'm assuming since Anthony Hopkins played Hannibal, it's changed some stuff,

but in a historical sense, this is the guy. And I didn't realize that this was the guy, the guy. But in doing all this research this week, I think even before we do Alexander, which looking at Hannibal, I shudder for how much studying Alexander is going to be. But I think Hannibal is my ancient guy. I think he's my favorite Alexander. I love Napoleon. Napoleon, like, taking advice in Hannibal's writings and shit like that.

And, like, looking at his battle strategy makes him even cool. the fact that he was like usually your favorite conqueror's favorite conqueror. Yeah. So. Fanbo. He was fanboying. Yeah, he's just, he's so cool. So we're just going to call him Hannibal.

Yeah. And everyone knows him as. I got my knee pads on for this one. So Hannibal was born 247 BCE. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe, yeah. Dates are maybe a little bit spotty back then.

I think they were pretty good at keeping records because those countries still existed. didn't get completely wiped out. This is my only thing. And this sounds odd. What kind of calendar are we on now? Right now? Yeah. It's not the Julian calendar.

Octavian calendar? I don't know. So... You're asking the wrong person. Back in this time, they ran on something called the Julian calendar, Julius Caesar. So the calendar...

Was Caesar? No, this was pre-Cesar. Are you sure? You keep talking. I'm going to look it up. Because there's... something, there's no way that this was this long ago and the calendar was off.

Like, we've changed calendars since then. Yeah, we definitely have. So, there's always going to be kind of some mystery to some of this stuff. 100 BC. Is... When did we switch over to calendars? I don't know. Google it.

When did the Julian calendar start? Okay. So there's going to be kind of some questions about it. Everything's going to kind of fall in season. and this whole thing was back in a time when you had war season. Usually when wintertime came around, that's when everything changed. You had to bed down no matter where you were. Yeah, 45 BCE also.

So we were on a different calendar. Yes, yeah. Yeah, so dates are going to be close. They'll be within the year. They'll probably be within the season just because some of the stuff happens within season. I think in research, once a new calendar takes over, they go back and they update everything to what the equivalent would be in the new frame of keeping. time. I would like to think. I think that's where we got leap year too. Was that changeover? Someone fucked up the paperwork on the changeover for the calendars and they're like, shit,

we have an extra day for four years. Well, Julius, this is still the intro. We'll get out of the intro very quickly. Julius said that there was 365.25 days in a year. And the changeover there was we went from having 365.25 days a year to having 365 days a year. And then every four years, of 366. So that was where the change over win. It was like every year we were getting a half a year or a quarter of a year. How that was even determined,

I know it's rotation, the full rotation around the sun, everything like that, but for someone to be able to figure that out even back then is pretty fucking crazy. It's magic. I don't... Time is only a construct. All right. Well, I think we've talked enough about the calendars up to this point. Let's get into the episode. Let's talk us some Hannibal.

Okay. So this guy being roughly born around 247 BC. He was born in Carthage. I like to think I apparently knew more about the ancient world, but I didn't know that Carthage was in Africa. I had heard in so many movies

about gladiators and watching a series about gladiators and stuff, you would have people that were from Carthage or would hear that. I assumed because Rome was always fighting, they were always just fighting someone that was on the same side of the Mediterranean as they were. the Greeks and people like that.

It didn't even make sense to me that they were also fighting against people that were just wanting to be in control of the Mediterranean. So that included the neighbors that were across the way. Something that I've struggled with in doing this research

after finding out that they're in what is now known as modern day Tunisia. These guys... Northern points of Africa. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. These guys were like one country removed from Egypt.

Yeah. So while Egypt is doing everything and we'll get into the rest of those eras, but while Egypt is doing their thing and I'm sure dealing with Greece because they probably... No, because that was before the Ptolemies, right? Yeah.

It was way before Ptolemies because that was like pre-Alexander and all that kind of stuff. That's what's so crazy about this area the fucking world is there's so much like recorded stuff. It's hard to keep track of. So this was pre all of that.

Egypt is doing their thing and then Carthage is over here in Tunisia you're like one country removed away. And they're like, fuck you, Rome. We're going to go through the first Punic War. You're going to take some of our shit. We're going to head up to the Iberian Peninsula, which Spain sounds cool.

Iberia sounds so much cooler than Spain. I had to look it up again because I know I'd heard that. And I was like, Iber, Iberia, and then, yeah, Spain. Spain and Portugal is the Iberian Peninsula. So once they realized that they weren't getting Sicily and Sardinia back after the Jesus, not World War I, after the first Punic War like, well, we got to figure something else out.

Let's head over to the Iberian Peninsula. Let's start claiming some shit over there. And like I said, this is all going on on this side, but Egypt is still like running their shit. And I didn't get a lot of crossover in my research. This brings us to our first map. Yay. So,

basically the territory of the Roman Empire around this time, it was just the arm of Italy. It was also Corsica, Sardinia, and they held a portion of Sicily. So it's just the outstretched arm of Italy. It doesn't really go up past, what would you consider that, the root of the penis?

Up there. Yeah. Okay. And then looking down, Carthage actually takes pretty much an entire, like, it looks like they're just rimming the top of Africa with their territory all the way over to where, like, the cape of, shit, what cape is it? This separates... Cape Horn?

No, Cape Horn is in Africa. Oh, my God. How did this? This is Africa. Oh, that is true. No, no, I meant the southern portion of Africa. The Cape of Good Hope. That's the southern...

Okay. It's where the Rock of Gibraltar. It's where the Rock of Gibraltar is. So all the way up to where the Straits of Gibraltar is, which is only eight miles wide. So between Africa and... France, you only have a separation of eight miles there, which I can't even get into it, but I actually thought about that for World War II perspective.

It's Africa and Iberia, though. At this time, yes. I'm just trying to, so people... Oh, like how close they were. Exactly. Battleships had to make runs through that. An eight-mile-wale gap, like, how do you, like, whoever's holding that has got to have ships just constantly, but, like, they were making runs through that.

Yeah. That's fucking nuts. All right. getting back more ancient times. So after they figure out this first Punic war, and also the term Punic, is basically like an ancient language for Carthage. Isn't it the,

I thought it was what the Romans called them. Oh, it might have been. The Romans. It would make sense that they get to name the war because they, shocking, spoiler alert, they end up winning the war. So. What if it was the first Punic war

and then it was like the second Roman war? Yeah. Because Carthage had won. So, like, no, no, no, we're not having two Punic wars. We're having one and one. Yeah. We get blamed for the first one. You guys take the heat for the second one.

So during that first Punic war, this is where you get Hannibal's father, Hamilcar, Barka. He's a general. And after Rome 1, he basically takes this land and all the way up to where the Straits of Gibraltar goes across to Iberia and starts conquering areas there. So he's spreading the Carthaginian Empire at this point. And instead of going south through Africa, they're probably like, well, this is just hot and fucking jungles. We're going to go ahead and go to this place because these people are probably weaker and we can take them over. And they apparently found just like a shitload of silver.

They said they were killed and stuff out of there, but it was like a ton of silver. And shiny shit was what you used to buy stuff back then. Well, and it helped out their family so much. this Barka clan, the Barkas. Originally, I read some things, and I think I heard it on a podcast that they had come from Tire before Carthage.

Yeah. It was like the family lineage, and they think that they don't know if it was like a royal family, if it was a military family, that the name just kept going. They didn't know how many generations it was. But the Barker's were a pretty big deal.

And along with being a general, he was also a statesman. So he worked with... Hamelcar. Yeah, Hamelcar was. So as a statesman, he had kind of like a faction behind him. They had, it's called the 140... The 104.

104. And it's kind of like their main council. Then there's a council on the outside of it. It's a Supreme Court type deal. Like they make the laws, the rules and enforce like punishment and all that kind of stuff. But the 104 out of like the thousand bigger body. Yeah. Is the one that makes all the decisions.

he was popular enough that he actually had like a barked section of this 104 that was kind of like his political party. Then there was something called the Peace Party. You can figure out how those two things work with the guy that was a general being the non-peace party and the other guys. But he had a really big presence in Carthage. The Barkan name was huge. And then as a general, him going over into Iberia and finding all this silver only makes him that much more important. because he's bringing in tons and tons of money for this country. Yeah.

Or what would you call it? Empire. Empire. Yeah. Something like that. Empire. So he eventually takes Hannibal with him on these trips up to the Iberian Peninsula. And I don't know if he really took him into like war or anything like that because he was like nine years old when he took him.

But essentially from that point on, he was kind of surrounded by that where he was seeing how an army was run and seeing his father essentially. dictating duties, you know, doing strategies, all that kind of stuff. So from a very young age of this guy is completely immersed in it. And, sorry, the fact that he was from this kind of general, military, high class family, his teachings beyond that, he was learning Greek, he was, I think they spoke Punic. Maybe that's just what the Italians called it, or the Romans called it, but he spoke the native language. Greek. They think that when he left and went with Hamlachar

up into Iberia, that's when he kind of started learning Iberian, whatever they would speak. Back then, it's just, it's not like France, they speak French. It's literally like, this tribe speaks this, and this person speaks that, yeah. But at the same time, he's, we see this overarching Greek influence

that covers this area from just how big Greece was. And he's, he's taught to speak Greek, he learns Greek philosophy, different things like that. Greek warfare? Yeah. They had fought in the Greco-Roman wars and everything. And Hamlicor wanted that so badly for him to have a military education, but then to also be kind of like well-rounded to where eventually if you invade a Greece, you know how to speak the language. That's what I fucking hated about that history channel documentary is it was like a bad knockoff of 300. They did the slow-mo with the blood splatters on the screen and everything. Yeah.

But all they had was literally just... just the guy playing Hannibal, just turned to the camera and just be like, ah, after he just, like, cut some guy down. And I'm like, no,

like, that you're making this guy look like a fucking idiot. Please tell me you got the quote that his father, or the credo that his father made him say. Yeah, so his father ends up drowning in battle. These water battles are going to come into play a little bit later on in the story,

water-related battles. But his father drowns, and he has a cousin in, they're in Iberia and coincidentally enough so he has two younger brothers one Mago the other Hasdrubal

his cousin in Iberia is like called Hasbel has I can't fucking pronounce this Hasdribal the wise or the fair The fair It's not his cousin It's his brother-in-law

Oh that's right So he had three older sisters And as much of history goes We don't know their names We also don't know Who Hamlicar's wife was That's true, yeah. But we also do have information that he had Hannibal, he had Hamlicar, and he had Mago.

So we kept the boys' names. You said Hamilcar. He had Mago, Hasrable, and Hannibal. Okay. These names are going to get more difficult as we've gone, especially when we get to the Roman names. So Hamilcar ends up drowning, and I think around this time Hannibal is 21 or 22. And who takes over the military there is going to be Hasrable, his, brother-in-law. Well...

Hasible the Fair. Yes. And during this time in Iberia, they're basically just consolidating their power and building up their strength and everything. They're trying to take over more territory, so they're going out, they're fighting local tribes and everything like that. And they're also bringing in these tribes and bringing them into the fold

as far as like being a fighting force and fighting for him, and that's going to come into play big for Hannibal going down the road. Are we skipping over the promise that he made to his father? No, that's what I'm getting. I was just explaining the brother thing. So, He makes this promise to his father prior to drowning, of course, and everything. When he's talking about essentially, I think his father kind of feels like he's going to be taking over for him or going to be doing something along the lines of leading military men.

So he basically makes him vow to never be a friend of Rome. Not only the end of the quote, it's something by iron, by fire, arrest the destiny of Rome. He like says that back to his father or something like that. Well, that was the oath that he made him take. He made him take that at nine years old before he brought him over to Iberia. So he had a nine-year-old son and he's like, okay, you can come with me to war. And this wasn't just like you and your dad talking in the living room. It was out in like the public square.

Then he was making, that's how big of a deal it was. And that's how much they didn't like Rome, which is going to also come in to play a little bit later on when we talk about a guy named Cirrus. Yes. so Hasdrable ends up being assassinated and because Hannibal essentially was the second in command

at 26 years old guy's number one it's pretty big come up yeah and now it's Hannibal's show Hannibal is controlling the force in Liberia and during this time Rome and Carthage

they still didn't have a great relationship and they had made an agreement in regards to Iberia and then Roman territory in which they wouldn't conquer anything on this side of this river, whatever, this denomination. And then they were like, fine, then you're not allowed to go ahead and conquer anything on this side, to give them almost like a buffer zone, something like that. Well, Rome was worried as soon as Hannibal came in, and so they made an alliance with this city called Saguntum. And Saguntum was like close to Carthaginian territory. No, it was in Carthaginian territory.

Oh, was it? So the north was the Roman side. Yeah. That was their side of the Treaty of the Ebro River. Uh-huh. The south was the site for Carthage. And in that side for Carthage, Saguntum, they said was like 300 meters south of the river. Oh, okay.

So it was, okay, I get what you mean. It wasn't like deep in the turdory. No, but. It was like on the border. If we're calling the dividing line, the river, it's provocation if you take over a city on the south side of the river. That's true. Um, oh, did you know? know this? I just saw this in my notes.

The Rock of Gibraltar and whatever one is on the side where it's now present day like Morocco. Uh-huh. Those were called the pillars of Hercules. We got to do an episode on Hercules. He came up so much in this research. I know. But he's not a real human. But it's weird

how it was a real person. Well, and it's like ambitions for real human beings to try to be like Hercules. Correct, but they also believe that Hercules was real and everything like that. It's impossible. I'm not saying it's Paul. I'm saying back then that was their thought.

They believed the seven laborers, all that kind of stuff. So what are you going to do? You have a city that is in your territory and everything. Well, Hannibal, not being a friend of Rome, was already planning on attacking. Saguntum and getting this thing kicked off with Rome. So he's like, ah, fuck, I'm just going to go and take over the city. So puts the city on an eight-month siege and ends up taking it over. And ends up getting a ton of fucking spoils and everything.

from that he automatically then sends back to Carthage. So Roman Carthage at this point were like still like, okay, well, you have Saguntum, all that kind of shit. Hannibal kind of did this without like the blessing of like the government of Carthage. From what it sounded like to me. Well, the tricky part is and again, this is all written by the Romans for the most part. And this is all just kind of like our best guess at what happened.

during this siege because eight months you have quite a bit of time to negotiate things. Yeah that's got to suck having your city and your siege but you're also in the enemy territory so it's not even one of those things like with fucking Stalingrad where the enemy is so far away from their supply chain issues

they just got to hold out. You're in enemy territory so they're resupplying just from like fucking next door. Yeah so this whole long ass siege is going on. They send a delegation from Rome down into Carthage they meet with this 104 and Rome's like, we don't really want to do this,

but you guys are kind of the aggressors here, just because of the whole Saguntum thing. So their position was like, you guys literally just allied with the city right on our borders or technically what we consider within our borders, and you're saying that's a Roman protectorate, which means that you can also send Roman troops there and everything. So you guys are kind of like on the wrong side of the river

where you're supposed to be as well. well the romans came down with an attitude of this is on you guys and again this is a situation where the barked people it's like a barked party and then this peace party are battling back and forth and hamletcar had done so well and hannibal had done so well in iberia that even the people on the peace side were like well he's sending us a ton of silver and he actually is doing really well in Spain. I think if he keeps gaining land, we're going to keep getting more and more shit. They said there was also

and I didn't know this term before, the Revenkism. I don't know if I'm pronounced it. I think it's Revenkism. Basically what it is, it's the belief, and this pertains like into Germany and everything, it's the belief that after a war, when you lose a bunch of areas, it's the movement to conquer over those entire

areas, like you have a right to those areas and you shouldn't have lost them. There was still a lot of that going on from the first Punic War when they had lost territory and everything like that, that they were like, no, we shouldn't have lost all this. So there's still a lot of animosity essentially between Rome and Carthage based on this previous war. Well, and they said that's what Rome essentially brought up was when we finished off the first Punic War and beat your asses. Do you guys not remember the whole thing about no aggression or anything like that? Yeah, you guys want another lesson? Do you guys need that? But Carthage, in siding with Hannibal,

in this situation. It's like, well, didn't you cross over and take Saguntum first, and it's in our territory? Rob's like, well, it's so close. It's, we don't really know what we're doing. They wanted us to come in there. They asked for us to come in there. And then they also immediately point out, and they go, well, in the first Punic War, you took Sardinia and you took Sicily from us because those two were under our power.

And like, well, we want it. You know, that's just how the, to the victor go the spoils. And then supposedly this Roman got up in this. is where it's real roamed up. He gets up and he grabs his toga and he rolls it around in his hand and he goes, you can have peace

or you can have war. Which one would you like? It matters not to roam. Yeah, that's what it was. It matters not to roam. And Carthage basically told him war. And so everything was thrown. He cut off his fucking head

and sent it back to no, they didn't really do. What was the episode that we did were when they would send guys in to negotiate, they would just cut their heads off and not send them back. Uh, fuck. Like the emissaries? Yeah.

Keep going, I'll think about it. Um, the Iliad? Maybe. Could have been. But now... Oh, no, it was probably one of the South American. It might have been the Incan of the Mayan. Could have been.

Yeah. Now, at this point in time, Hannibal has a hold of Saguntum. And having a hold of Saguntum means that you're on your way to start trying to fight back in Italy to get to Rome. Here's the thing too. Prior to in the first Punic War, they didn't have this area of Iberia. They didn't have a presence essentially already established on that part of Europe,

or what you would consider now Europe. Mainland Europe, I guess. And when you have now this area that you control, you're able, and also this buildup of all these troops from people that you've conquered in these areas, you now not only have your army that's then sitting back in Carthage and everything that you could send across the Mediterranean,

which at this point they really couldn't do because part of that whole thing with the, what would you call them not war reparations, that's the monetary but like the conditions essentially their conditions of surrender. Is that the Carthaginian Navy could only have like a hundred ships

which wasn't enough to do like shipping as far as like trade and everything goes. It wasn't enough to be effective at that. Well and that's where I think this whole thing is centered around why this happens and it makes so much sense to me that the Mediterranean is so much more important than the land that surrounds it.

Yeah. Because if you control the Mediterranean, you control the shipping ways. And just like you said, before we went all the way down around Cape Horn and Africa, you had to come through that straight. Yeah. So if you control the Mediterranean, you get a piece of silver or whatever off of each one of those transports. And if you don't want to let it go, you just take it.

What are they going to do about it? You're the one that controls the waterway. You have that supremacy of the area. And you control all of it going down as many miles as you want to go down the coast. Like, you're not going to escape our reach is basically what it was. And that's why there's so many wars that happen in this area. The Mediterranean is just rife. They have to have like, yeah, most war per capita, something.

So now you have essentially a land-based force built up on the same continent that Rome is on. And pretty much the battle, you know, do you guys want war apiece? The war now kicks off and now we're into the second puny. War. Now, in spring of 20 or sorry, 218 BC, Hannibal ends up leaving what's called Cartagena, Cartagina, which is basically New Carthage in that area of Iberia that they control. He ends up leaving with 40,000 soldiers, 12,000 cavalry, and 38 elephants, and he enters Gaul. Didn't he leave with more? Because doesn't he? Well, that's 52,000.

Yeah, I thought he, because he, we'll get to it. Okay. So he entered into Gaul, which Gaul is what was considered part of France. It was like southern France. So that's where you get the Gauls that come from. It was also a extremely Celtic region. Turns out that Celtic is just like a word for tribe. So it's just tribes of people that are living in this area.

So you're not pulling into Gaul territory and seeing like big cities. You're seeing these tribes, and these tribes all want to protect the land, so you're not going through territory that's safe. It's very hostile territory as soon as you get in there. So he ends up leaving in the spring. Troop counts, you know, it's going to go back and forth, because depending on what information you get. But, I mean, not at quite a few guys, you know, 38 elephants, 12,000 cavalry.

At this point, he crosses the Pyrenees. We're just going to brush over. the first mention elephants? We're going to brush over the first mention. I didn't know if we wanted to get into it now or wait until we get into battle and then be like this is what the elephants were meant for. Because if we just talk about it and then we don't talk about the battle aspects until we get to it, I think it loses some of its flavor.

Well, yeah, the first thing I would say is rolling into Gaul and running into these tribesmen. I bet my life that none of them had seen an elephant before. Oh, fuck no. And that would be the scariest thing in the world to see. elephant. It's a walking tank. It's the largest land animal. Of course you'd never see anything like that.

Making all this fucking noise. And these things were, you know, were bred to essentially scare the fuck out of people and to run people down. And people that could never conceive of an animal that big seeing one for the first time. You just see someone walk up and the elephant

grabs it by its trunk and just slams them on the ground three times and then just throws them. They're like, we give up. We give up. Do you guys need a place to stay for them? night. Yeah. Our village, Me village is Sue Village. So he has to cross two mountain ranges. So he's looking

to fucking burn Rome down. He's needing to get there. He has to cross first the Pyrenees mountains. And once he crosses the Pyrenees, Rome is kind of like onto what he's doing, or at least has some word of what he's doing. So they send a Roman force to basically

try to like cut him off. Because the plan is once you get past the Pyrenees, if you just stay along the coast, and kind of hug the coast, it's a much more flat route, much more travelable route to get to Rome. Because you're not going through the heart of the mountains. You're just following the coastline, essentially.

Exactly. So, like, Rome was like, well, we just got to cut this guy off and then he can't get toward Rome. Well, he throws him a curveball and does what no one would ever expect. He's like, nope, we're not doing this. I'm heading north, and we're heading over the fucking Alps. And I think, I hate that this is what he's,

most known for is taking these elephants. It's like, is that the good that took the elephants over the Alps? And you're like, well, yeah, technically. But this is literally, this is the first chapter of this crazy-ass story. Yeah. And just the whole idea behind going up into the Alps, this is where the Hercules thing kind of crosses in. Because the route you're talking about is the route that Hercules took when he crossed the Alps and did all that shit. So this whole idea and legend of Hercules,

even though Carthage is Carthage and not a part of Greece, it's still in the zeitgeist of knowing who Hercules was. So this route that he was going to be taking down through the Alps was the route that he wanted to take because that's how Hercules got there. So his thought process was to do it. Unfortunately, when you have these troops coming up from the south, you have to avoid them. when they get to the Rhone River,

they got there, I think it was like September. I think they had about 38,000 troops after he had left some with his brother Hasdrubal back in the... The Rhone is basically between the Pyrenees and the Alps where they're trying to cut him up. It's not past the Alps. He hasn't actually gone over the Alps yet. No, he got stopped in between.

There were some tribes that wanted to give him some trouble on the other side of the Rhone River, so they couldn't cross there. Um, they ended up pulling out some trickery because what they did was they sent like, I want to say it was like 10,000 forces up the river. And they, 10,000 forces, 10,000, I don't think it was cavalry. It was probably light infantry. It would have to be foot soldiers.

They sent them up the river, had them cross the river. That's not a euphemism for like killing them. They didn't send them up the, they sent them literally like up river. So they sent them up away from this, uh, hostile tribe, had them circle around to the back of the tribe, and as Hannibal marched his guys across the Rhone River, they all came down, this tribe comes down and attacks, they're having battle on the shores, and then all of a sudden this 10,000 comes swooping up behind this tribe, and the tribe's like, oh, shit, where'd these guys come from? How did this work? And they end up

basically choking them off, beating them, being able to cross the Rone River. Choking, beating them off. And once they cross the Roan River, they can either continue on that path because that's the path that Hercules took or they can go way north and they can avoid these Roman forces. And Hannibal doesn't want to battle yet because technically they're not in Italy. They're still outside Italy. This whole idea that he has is he wants to attack them in Italy. You would think, why not just do it by boat because you were so close. But the way that boats worked back then for like transport and all that stuff was for every boat that you had, you had to have a million rowers.

so you're not going to have enough room on these ships to be able to... And that's where I get back to them only having a hundred or being allowed. They didn't have the Navy capable of supporting anywhere near enough troops to where you could like establish a foothold. Well, the part about not having a Navy and not having other ports is you have to be able to stop a certain amount of days on travel so you can get refueled to continue moving. They didn't have a way to get across

because there was no port for them to refuel and get back. So they had to go by land. one of Hannibal's like biggest strategies was he was going to work his way to Rome but he essentially was going to weaken it as much as possible on his way there. His goal was essentially to turn as many of the areas that were loyal to Rome or were under Roman control against Rome by a show of force of saying like you join me I'm going to take over Rome and then you'll have been on my side. and he ends up like crossing part of his plan to go ahead and get across the Alps was he apparently had had some type of communication

like sent emissaries or something to some of the gulls that were actually on the other side of the Alps and had arranged essentially for them to like bolster his forces and join his army once he got over there Roman got wind of that and went up in advance

prior to him crossing the Alps and like did battle and took that area back over they wanted to make sure that they had forces that were ready to go as soon as he crossed the Al. Especially that he's not going to add 10,000 men to his army as soon as he gets past the Alps. Well, regardless, he ends up going over the highest,

and it's kind of been debated on where he actually crossed the Alps at. There's like two routes that he could have taken. And they actually did studies on one of the routes, the one he was suspected to take, like, I think the highest pass in the Alps, and they had found where it had shown by carbon dating, there was enough evidence through carbon dating of the foot travel and the animal travel and all the supplies and all of that stuff

they had to bring through there. You're talking about an area that's very cold as well. Oh, yeah. So like animal shit and all that kind of stuff gets folded into the ground and by carbon dating that kind of stuff you can find out what it was. Well, guess what?

You're not going to have a much of mules and horses and everything in that amount crossing through the Alps unless it's been tracked back to Hannibal. Well, then if you find a big old pile of elephant shit on the side of the Alps, probably pretty good... Jackpot. Pretty good guess that's...

That was Hannibal's route. Argument over. So this whole trip up the Alps becomes something that you would always think that the ascent going up the mountains is going to be so much easier than the descent going down the mountains. And it took them nine days on the Ascent because as they were going up, they were still running into these small little bands that live in the Alps. So they're fighting as they're trying to get up over the Alps.

So not only are they trying to get Elephants, horses, men, provisions, any booty that you had that you had just taken from the last town, that being physical or material. You have so much that you're trying to move up the Alps, which is a fight in and of itself, but you're still battling along the way. It still only took them nine days to get to the top of the Alps.

There were even a couple of tribes that were like that feigned being friendly to them and wanting to work with them. And it essentially had, because this isn't just like 40,000, 50,000, you know, there's elephants and everything. It's not like they just travel through. Like you essentially have these villages or tribes that have scouts to go out, especially if you're marching this many people.

It's going to draw some attention. You then have them reporting back to the other tribes. They're sending out work to other ones. So you can have some of these tribes that like team up and then try to like push the essentially Hannibal and his troops out of their area. One of these tribes actually is like, oh no, no. We'll also actually show you the way through the Alps and everything. We're going to be cool here.

and actually lead them through the valley, I think they were going to go through anyway. But actually they have an ambush waiting. And so they ambush Hannibal, and he loses some guys, but he ends up pushing back the... So even before they're over the Alps, they're already getting into battles, or little skirmishes at least.

The Alps was very, very rough for infantry size. But yeah, nine days to the top of the Alps. Pretty crazy. It only took nine days going through that much shit. The dissent turns out that it was... harder because there was a rock slide that happened on their path down that wiped out the entire pathway. So as they're walking downhill, you had these animals that all of a sudden don't have a path. They're having troubles getting them down there. Their solution is something that I never would

have thought of. But supposedly... I had to rewind it a couple times to make sure I heard it correctly. Supposedly, they had carved steps to go down the side of the Alps. And the way that they that they did it was they chopped down a bunch of trees. They had started fires all the way down this rock slide to heat the rocks up. And then they had expired wine, which is pretty much vinegar. And they would pour the vinegar on the rocks to crack the rocks to be cooling it. Yeah. Essentially, if you get something super, super hot rocks, you can super cool it and then it'll crack or split.

So into smaller pieces that were then movable. How do you have that much fucking expired? Like how much wine? Yeah. Especially expired money, you fucking traveling with. Well, and also, you can't use the water because that's what you have to have. So. For the animals, can't drink wine.

Yeah. Well, and even the humans, if you're drinking vinegar pretty regularly, it's not going to be a good damn for you. That's true. It's not great. But they end up making it down in six days. So they crossed the Alps, ascent and descent, in 15 total days. 15 total days it took them to get down into the Poe Valley. and the Po Valley turns into

Well, it is Italy So once you're in Italy, it's game on They ended up coming out of the mountains I think they had It was like 38,000 Total troops that they had had They came down out of the Alps With 20,000 infantry

And I believe it was 6,000 Calvary. Cavalry Which, I mean, for those 15 days, that you're having to hike. Yeah, you're probably in some lowland areas, like when they were hiking up through the Rhone Valley. So essentially it's the river that he crossed. He then followed the river because it has a source

and usually rivers will carve the, you know, shallow path through mountain. So he falls it up. But for the point when they start climbing over into, you know, over the Alps, they're having to haul all of their food for all of their animals. All the horses that they were carrying, they have to have food for them,

the elephants, and then all the ship for the, the infantry, and so if you go a period of time where you're not able to forge for food or there's no villages around, you're going to fucking lose people. And if it comes down to carrying the silver or carrying more food for one of the guys, you're going to carry the silver. I don't know if you're carrying it on the way up. Well, anything that they had taken, if they hadn't sent it back somehow, they had to carry everything that they plundered.

Yeah, from there. Yeah, that makes sense. So once they land, they're down in the Poe Valley, and that nasty Roman force that tried to pick them off at the Rhone River knew that they got hoodwinked and during that time they had loaded up on a boat they'd crossed across the Mediterranean and the Roman consult I believe is what they're called the Roman consul that led this Roman army his name was

Publius Cornelius Scipio and the Scipio thing is going to play a pretty big part in this entire story because Skipio ends up coming over they have a skirmish called the Battle of Tinnicus or Tickinus Correct, yeah so the battle of Ticinus I think

Tisinus that sounds right It ends up being a minor victory for Hannibal but what that does is it actually all of the a bunch of the Gauls in that area see this happen and see him beat the Roman force and like oh shit this guy can't actually do this.

And so they commit a bunch of people to his side. So he ends up, like Adam was saying, he comes out with not a ton. He's like, I think it was like around 20,000 soldiers, you said, like between 4,000 and 6,000 cavalry. And he didn't have as many elephants. He lost quite a few elephants in the Alps. Nine.

They think nine. Nine died? Yeah. Okay. So he's down to what at that point, 30. Mm-hmm. And he comes down, wins this little battle. He then gets his forces back up

40,000 men with the addition of these gulls. Now, kind of talking about, I wanted to kind of touch on the difference between the armies themselves and kind of their makeup and everything. Yeah. Before you do that, we've got to lay the one foundational piece here. Okay. So in this Battle of Tickness, one of the things that happens is, Skippio, the consul gets knocked off of his horse and gets wounded in the middle of the battle.

this is where the Roman influence kicked in. Supposedly, his son, Scipio, Jr. Skipio Afrikanus. Well, now he, or he was later on. But he's just Scipio Jr. at this point. Supposedly runs out and saves his father from the battlefield and saves him from dying.

There's some other things that weren't Roman written that said it was a, a Ligurian slave that he had had. And he was the one that actually came and saved him. But in order to set up what happens at the end of this story, we have to say that it could have been Skipio Jr. that saved his father, Scipio. That makes sense.

So yeah, now these armies blow me away, just how they set up. It's so vastly different with the way that they're built, because the Romans have their style, and the Roman style is effective. Yeah, it's done them well up to this point.

So with the Romans, you have basically a uniform army. So regardless of where you're from At what territories they've pulled you in They're training you in the Roman style So you would have you know Certain people would have like armor and the big shields And they all had different you know

Everyone wasn't holding a shield in a spear or a sword You essentially had people that were just like javelin throwers They would just have javelins and like a small shield Pikeman Pikeman you have the guys in the front That would essentially have like The stabbing spears and like the big body Almost body size and those were the guys that would move forward

As far as like the infantry goes you would then have like slingers that were throwing because there weren't bow and arrow Yeah they had archers so they had archers and everything So you had that too All of them though trained essentially Fighting as a Roman unit So regardless of what someone's strength might be

They were they might have been pigeonholed into something They did have infant or I'm sorry they did have cavalry as well So the Romans did have cavalry All Roman What you had with Hannibal's force is essentially these different groups of people, like different ethnicities, that kind of formed into these certain, basically roles or squads. So you had these horsemen who were, I'm trying to get the names of them, hold up. The Numidian. The Numidian horsemen. Now, Numidia was essentially the area,

if you're looking at a map of Africa and you see where, like, Tunisia is. It's kind of the area that was to the left of that, leading all the way to the Straits of Gibraltar. It's the kingdom that was right next door. Supposedly, Hamlicar's wife was Numidian. Okay. So there was some political royalty type hooking up going on. You would have Spanish and Gauls being as the infantry, and then you also had African infantry as well. You did have Spanish and Gaul cavalry as well. So he had three separate cavalry groups, all kind of having their different strengths and everything. The Namedians, man, they were the cream of the crop, though.

If you were sending out and you had three of them, Nominians took one side by themselves and you sent the other two on the other side. Yeah, they're horsemanship, horse, horse, horestendry, whatever you want to call it, they were great on horses. They could maneuver in the field, and it's because they were in the desert, where you ride horses, you learn how to break horses, you learn how to control them. the Namedians riding horses didn't have a saddle,

they didn't have a bridle and they didn't have a bit in the horse's mouth. They were literally controlling it by using the main and then they might have had a rope around the snout. To be able to control a horse to turn on a dime without any of those things that would keep you on it? Yeah. Feel like you're secure enough to like stay on it

while you're maneuvering it, especially when you're leaning over one side to spear like slash with a sword. They also had slingers. Yes. Slingers sounds like what I would want to do in this situation. Slingers were just guys that had like slings

or rock slings. Probably rock slings. I don't think they had slings back then. And they would just sling rocks. That was the one job. They actually had balls that were about the size if I think they said probably a golf ball or like a racquet ball. Those would do some damage. They said they could throw them

further in range than the archers could fire their arrows effectively. And wind doesn't affect it. It's a metal ball flying through the air. So distance, it's still going to carry. It's not going to blow one way or the other. So, and you might think that that might serve as kind of a disadvantage because you have

an army of people that don't all speak the same language that aren't all under, you know, able to communicate with each other. But he takes them and puts them in the proper place that they should go and is able to essentially form this hodgepodge military, but is super effective because everyone is playing to their strengths. It's Hannibal's A team. Yeah. Exactly. It's like it's having a really good basketball team and then putting an all-star team against them where everyone is the best their position playing their role.

Well, kind of back to the Roman style, they had columns that they would fight in. They would fight in the first column, just a flat line, a second column, flat line, and then work their way back. With the way that the Hannibal had set up his army, you have a better chance to flank because you're going to have horses on one side that if they start beating back their area, you can start to. circle and you can start to in circle and fight from behind, which fighting on two fronts, if you can get back to that second column before or while you're blowing through the first column, you're just going to envelop them. And he does it time and time again and the Romans can't fucking figure out what he does. Well, the first big example of this in his military prowess is going to be December 218 BC at the Battle of Trebia.

Now, he's going up against this guy named Sopronius Longus, and their camped essentially, I'm going to kind of try to set the stage. If you're looking at a, let's just say, a sheet of paper, right down the middle, go ahead and draw a river. Right side of it, there's going to be the Roman camp. Left side of it is going to be the Carthaginian and Hannibal's camp. You have, and, you know, there's miles.

I think they said there was, what, like six miles between the camps, something like that. It was probably three miles to the river and then three miles again to the other camp. So Hannibal actually says, sends over a bunch of his cavalry and basically just has them fucking harassed the shit out of the Roman camp. And, you know, trying to harass and kill their patrols, centuries, anything that they can do.

Was this the one where they had the Numidians fall off the horses to make fun of the way that the Romans rode their horses? I believe so. And so, you know, he sends out essentially, he's getting harassed and Sampronius is wanting to fight because that's how you bring glory to yourself. That's how you get promotions into the Senate and everything as you win these military victories. The way it through Romans work, too,

was you basically had one year that you were elected into these positions as console. So within that one year, if you're going to raise your status, you need to get some wins. Exactly. And Longus, his last name being Longus, is the funniest shit in the world.

Yeah. If I was a Roman leader, my name would be Dongus Longus. Okay. but Longest wants to go. Longest wants to make a name for himself. And they've had little skirmishes kind of along the way where they would go out. When these parties would get together, you would send your cavalry out to kind of keep an eye on the other troops. Did you hear the term skirmisher a lot?

Yeah. So like, and I looked it up to see what it was. A skirmisher is essentially just like light infantry, but they're meant to just go and harass like an enemy troop. Yeah. To basically where you can't get like your. shit. Like you can't set up camp because you're still getting kind of attacked. It's like having a couple b swarming around you. You can't really do anything because

you're busy trying to swat him away. Fire one over their bow. Exactly. And so this is basically what he's doing is he sending his skirmishes in there to basically just provoke this guy. Well, essentially at this point, none of the Romans have really woken up yet. This is very, very early in the morning. And so this longest guy is like,

fuck this. This guy's trying to pull one over on us. We're just going to go ahead and get all our guys together and just march out and meet them and try to chase these guys down. What's going on in Hannibal's camp? Hannibal got a good night's sleep. They went to bed early. He has his guys wake up early in the morning, get a nice warm breakfast in. Calisthenics.

Uh-huh. Calisthenics, probably. They're out there stretching with their spears. And start rubbing themselves down with olive oil. And why would you grease yourself down? Well, apparently, didn't know this, but this was a big tactic because what it would do is it would keep your joints nice and supple. and kind of like add a layer of almost insulation to your skin because it is going to be cold out. This is in December that this is happening. It fills your pores up so your pores don't suck in as much cold. So it is kind of like that extra little factor.

Why and how they learn this? Beyond me. I don't know how you'd be able to figure it out. When you only have a limited amount of things to try for certain remedies and things like that, at one point you're just trying everything you can. But it worked. Like, had we not looked this up and talked about it, if I had told you that rubbing olive oil on your skin would insulate you and make your joints feel better, you would think I'm the dumbest person alive, right? But you said it's an anti-inflammatory, right?

Yeah, but they didn't have that research back then to confirm it. They were just like hope and pray that it works, and it turns out it did. And with battles back then, these things were usually just like all-day affairs. And so you may think the concept of like just getting your troops' breakfast wouldn't matter, but when you, essentially are just in a melee for the day running back and forth and everything, you need something where your body can like burn some calories and you need something to feed off of. They didn't have cliff bars back then. Exactly. So Longest actually gets all of his guys out. Most of them hadn't even eaten breakfast yet. They're throwing their gear on and he marches his guys two and a half miles to the river. And in December, he has these motherfuckers way to cross the river.

through in some areas chest deep icy water. And Marches his soldiers over there. It was 40,000 basically soaking wet guys in December who hadn't had their fucking weedies against a fully oiled up, greased up, well-fed 40,000 Carthaginians. Moving in a cold wet toga sounds like the worst thing ever. Fuck me. How would you do you get to the river and you're like, so wait, what are we doing here? We're waiting for them.

They're coming across the river or we're coming across or we are? I'm going back. And I'm guaranteeing you right now. It wasn't the fucking commanders getting wet here. No, they were probably riding on somebody's shoulders. Or they were on top of the horses. They made like four cavalrymen walk across the river while they rode their horses. They stopped on the saddle so they made sure they didn't get their legs went and had them hold them for balance.

So they end up meeting on the field of battle and it was a relatively like flat plane, which is perfect. Romans love to fight on flat services because you can't see you can see ambush is coming, you can see the entire layout of the enemy, it keeps them from getting beat. Well, the night before, being the strategic genius,

they're surveying the battlefield and Hannibal finds a spot where there's like kind of a little bit of like a dip down or kind of a shallow area that's got a bunch of brush built up and everything. He ends up sending out a thousand of the cavalry. And I want to say a

thousand troops. What he did, and this is fucking brilliant to me, his brother Mago, is that his name? He brings Mago in. Mago is the leader of the troops, basically. He's the, not the general,

because Hannibal's a general, but he's... Lieutenant. Yeah, lieutenant, whatever. He goes, go get me your hundred best men, whether it be cavalry, infantry, just your hundred best men. He brings the hundred best men in.

Hannibal looks at those hundred best men. guys, he goes, you're the finest fighters in our troop. You are the toughest men that I know. I'm choosing you for a special project. You go find 10 of the people that you trust and that you work best with and then you come back to me.

So they had a thousand mixed in infantry cavalry, but they chose the best of the best for this supreme fighting force. Just the fact that he had that much confidence in his guys to be like, hey, you guys are good? My brother said you're good. Go pick up your best

guys, and we're going to make sure that this is where the surprise happens. So he hides his brother and his brother's detachment. Essentially, if you're looking at it, kind of like south of where the battle's happening, but on their side of the river. As soon as the Romans crossed and start approaching the Carthaginian lines, and, you know, the soldiers are meeting in battle head on and everything, Maga's detachment essentially rides in from the right, and the Romans are already past them and completely attacks and just in circles the Roman rear and these are your best troops

they're guys on horses and they're just cutting down because in how the Roman army worked as well is you would have they separated also by age group so you would have the people that were in the prime in the front the strongest guys then the next row back would be I think the younger and then in the next row back would be the oldest guys your least effective fighting force

is going to be in the rear so now you have essentially the best thousand guys that Hannibal has just plowing into the back of the rear of this and just completely encircling them. You never want to give your enemy your rear because as soon as you give him your rear, he's going to take it. I do like that they put the old guys in the back

because they said that they were the most experience on the battlefield and understood the most, but they were also the ones that could move the least. So you can't have them up. You can't have them up wearing themselves out on the front line so you keep them back just in case shit goes so bad that it gets to them and they got to get off their stools.

Well, the end result of this ends up being 20,000 Romans killed. Fuck. So, yeah, the totals that came into this, Hannibal, after his run-through of Tickinus, he got so much support from the Gauls and Ligurians, he went from 20,000 infantry to 29,000 that they took into battle. I think they said 40,000 total. Yeah, they converted, it was 11,000 total is now what they had in their cavalry, and then they had the 30 elephants. Okay.

So 29,000 infantry, 11,000 cavalry, and 30 elephants. Again, we're just brushing over the elephants for some weird reason. Okay, let's talk about the goddamn elephants. I was waiting for a battle that featured the elephants to talk about the elephants. Well, and we need to talk about them now because we're not going to be able to talk about them after this. That's true. But Longest had 36,000 infantry, 4,000 cavalry, and you said they had 20,000 losses. Yep.

So between infantry and cavalry, you have. 40,000. A 50% troop loss is a massive, massive loss. They were saying that most of these, this staggered in my mind. They said during most battles, armies would like retreat if they were around 5 to 10% losses. And they would fucking be turning tail and getting out of there. They said that like a 15% loss or a 20% loss almost guaranteed that you lost the war.

It was that catastrophic. And I'm not saying that, well, with Hannibal, this is just the fucking, he's just getting started. Yeah, his first floor. Exactly. This is, this is opening night. Okay. Okay. We got to talk about these war elephants. Okay. So these elephants are essentially having to be, they weren't bred, they had to be captured, like, and they were trained essentially to run at the enemy, and because these were such

huge beasts, they would have a couple people right on the backs who were like shooting arrows and stuff. They would actually have... It was a tower, wasn't it? It was not so much a tower, because that, would tip and everything, but it was basically like if you were to take a chariot, how it was surrounded, and then put a back on it towards a box. Yeah. And then that sat on the back of it.

So you had cover and then you just popped out and you were just firing. So they had two or three guys that were up on this. As the elephant is essentially running into either infantry or it was scaring this shit out of horses. Like your horses were never able to be trained for this. Like horses could never be. They're like, what the fuck is this thing? and they would charge in and be just like trying to trample

they would be trained to trample enemy troops So you got horses fucking throwing the riders Scattering not charging through them And that's why they would have the elephants out on like the flanks Because then it would just scatter because that's where you kept your infantry And they'd be going against the enemy infantry Or sorry cavalry And these fucking elephants were just causing havoc

With this cavalry Well and If you say get the idea to try to take down the elephant, you're trying to shoot in, or, well, shoot an arrow is your best, you're far enough away. You're probably not going to get trampled. If you have a spear or a sword and you're trying to cut an elephant, which has like some of the thickest skin on the planet, you're not going to be doing a whole lot. This guy has natural armor and he's running at you. And in order to get a shot in on an elephant, you have to be within trampling range to get a swing.

How far can you throw that fucking spear? Yeah, dude. Versus how fast is that fucking elephant. It's the scariest thing in the world. One of the later beliefs was, and I don't know how all this works, maybe it's the noises they make or the movements or something like that, but pigs, scared elephants.

So there were studies... Just like the mouse thing? Yeah, I... Like the fucking cartoon was like, oh my dude, there's a mouth in here. Something like that. They said that they had looked through Roman history and had seen battles

where they actually brought a bunch of pigs in to try to counter the elephants. Just like the sound of the... the squeals. Maybe, yeah. You just sit there squeezing a pig under. There's a guy designated in each troop to, like, squeeze a pig. The double edge of the elephant, though, is if by some chance you scare the elephant

and he turns around and heads back the other way. Or you wound him enough to panic him and throw him into, like, yeah. He is trained to run straight. So if he turns his ass around, he's running straight. Just as much damage going one way or the other. So it is risky, but I think that the elephants, I mean, I thought that he was the first guy. I guess Alexander used elephants. There were a couple other people that had used elephants in war.

I think he got elephants used against him when he was going through India, saw that, adopted it, and then started pulling in elephants. Makes total sense, yeah. But again, they use a ton of resources. You don't need a ton of them to be effective because it's essentially a scare tactic to throw everything into chaos. Well, they are animals, though, and they can be wounded. they can be killed. And he ends up losing, you know, each of these battles, he's losing men, not in anywhere near the numbers that the Romans are,

but he's also losing, you know, horses and he's losing elephants too. Horses and men can be replaced. You ain't getting replacement elephants when you weren't here. These things would be captured. They said they were so surprised that they would have programs that would capture these elephants, go out and capture them, which that has to be the craziest fucking most dangerous job ever. You're trying to capture a baby elephant.

What do you try to, the parents are going to try to try to, fucking murder you and it's not like you can just load this thing up into the back of a fucking flatbed and haul ass out of there. You're having to like battle the fucking parents while you're trying to separate this baby from it. Yeah, well, it's like trying to take an egg out of an eagle's nest and the eagle sees that you're there trying to take an egg out of a gator's nest. Like you're, you're dealing with something that's much stronger and much more angry because they had that maternal instinct.

I don't, I would never volunteer for that job. I wonder if they ever thought about it. Like, well, maybe if we just take a baby elephant along with us, we can just send him out into the battlefield first, and then all the other elephants will run out to try to protect him. I don't think that was the case. I don't see how they just didn't develop elephant breeding programs. You think that would have been much easier after the 500th guy got fucking trampled to death

trying to get the baby ones. I know they were very smart back then, but I don't know if a breeding program... You do with horses? They were able to breed desirable lines of horses. I think a baby elephant's a little different than a baby horse. And I think... They obviously didn't do it for a reason. Elephants live for a really long time, don't they?

Yeah, they said the prime of an elephant's career was literally like, between like 40 and 60s or years old. No way. The prime war elephant years were. Where those, that was when you're going to fuck shit up if you were a war elephant. Holy shit. Yeah. Can you imagine having 20 years if you could keep one of...

They said there was one that survived one of the longest living ones that survived with Hannibal on this run was like 60 years old and that was the one that Hannibal would like ride. And then it eventually ends up dying too. Gledge brought that guy up. Do you know why Hannibal went ahead and rode him? I don't. He was the only one. Because after that win happens, they get basically all of the Gauls in the area were like, oh shit.

We're in. Didn't realize you could do that to the Romans. We're in. The army swelled to 60,000 troops. just a very, very big come up. But after the battle, the army had to lay low because they are just white. You just crossed the Alps. You were in the Po Valley for a little while.

You went through this first little skirmish kind of halfway battle. And then you go through Trebia, which was a hell of a fight. And you have to figure out how you're going to live. The area had enough supplies to where they could get through the winter. So they decided to winter there. elephants don't particularly do great in the winter time would yeah would you assume too that because the roman camp with all of their supplies was right there do you think after killing that many guys that you keep marching toward because they would then have to cross the river and do all that kind of stuff

i'm assuming the romans get back to their camp and pack as much shit as they can and get the fuck out of dodge right because they need to get back to where fucking friendly area yeah but you would go and you would gain supplies then for all the stuff they had to leave behind it's not like they're packing the thousand guys, dead guys, clothes. Yeah, well, you also have 20,000 men's worth of shit that aren't packing their own stuff. The tents and probably all that kind of stuff. So you're gathering resources by these victories.

But yeah, like, this isn't where it's a battle, and then two months later, there's another battle, and then two months later, there's these big, just pitched battles that take place once every what, like six to eight months to a year? Because after these battles, first of all, Rome's got to replace a

shit ton of dead people, and then, animals guys have to end up then gathering supplies because again, they're not in friendly territory and they're having to then stop fighting for the winter. There are seasons in which you can fight in which you can travel and yet this is why it was so important

that he made these allies essentially out of the Gauls is because they also knew how to survive in this area. Yeah. One of the words that I found interesting that has a different meaning back then as it does now. The word forage

what I say the word forage do you like think about taking a basket out in the woods and gathering berries yeah yeah that's some berries they had foraging parties their foraging parties were like going out and finding villages and then just taking it

they were foraging through the villages for anything that they could use oh yeah they were taking life anything and everything so the foraging wasn't like them going to look for a wheat field or something like that they were going to look for a farm and to take everything out of the farm

they'll grab the wheat on the way back but that's not like pillaging or anything like that back there. They just called it foraging. So. It's a much nicer term. Oh, yeah. Than the murder and probably wholesale rape of all the villagers. One of his strategies that Hannibal employed to kind of start to grow the military

and to try to change these Roman allies' minds was whenever they would capture any sort of prisoners or anything like that. First of all, he wanted to be really good to his guys. so he let his soldiers go through, take what they wanted, any kind of prize, anything like that. I think they took the gold. There was something else that got sent back to Carthage, and then they let the guys have everything else. But anybody that they captured was they gave them two options. If it wasn't a Roman that they had captured, they would go ahead and be like, hey, we'll let you guys go or we'll sell you back to your people.

But understand that we're not going to kill you. We're going to kill everybody else. We're not going to kill you. Go back to your villages, go back to your people, and tell them that we're coming for Rome's ass, and we were nice enough to you to let you go. Tell them what you saw today. Tell them how you ended up captured. And when we come through your town or your village or your people, just remember that.

Maybe you want to join up with us. Maybe you want to take on Rome, because you know that Rome took you guys over, and that's why you're allies now. Well, the other thing, too, is you're in an area where you're probably reliant on. keeping as few people hostile toward you? Oh, yeah. As ever. So now if you have Rome coming up from one direction and you got all these tribes behind you

that are now turning hostile, it serves in their interest to essentially, unfortunately align with Rome in that scenario. And then the other guys, they would allow them to either kill the Roman troops or they would allow them to sell them for a profit in slavery. They were able to make some money off of it. So overall, not a great move historically,

but that was just kind of the times. That was what you did. I would, oh, I don't know if I'd rather be sold into slavery or be killed as a slave or as a prisoner. That's tough. Sold. Yeah, probably sold. Yeah.

You have a chance of escape at that point. Yeah, true. Your legs can still work. Well, while they're kind of, you know, laying in low riding out the winter there, they end up losing all but one of the elephants. And that was why Hannibal rode around on him because he was the guy and he wanted the elephant.

Exactly. we come to spring of 217 so the army crosses is it the apennines yep the apennine mountains the apennine mountains and the arno river um Rome is like well fuck let's try this again so they send out these guys console um is it guinecus i believe so servilis yeah and then gaius flaminus flaminus flaminus to basically chase him down and to block the roots that he would, that would be able to be taken by an army this size, the most probably suspected routes, two of them on the way to roam.

So their jobs are to just basically go out and park themselves there and defend the way. Smart move. Definitely smart move. On this trip through the Apennines and down, excuse me, across the river, down by the river it was a lot of marshland. I don't know how this happens. I don't know how you can get it. Well, I do know one way that you can get it. Hannibal developed conjunctivitis in his eyes.

Conjunctivitis pink eye. Yes. So he ends up deciding he's got basically one of these guys guarding, if you're looking at it, you know, when you're looking at a map of Italy, there's a path to the right and there's a path to the left. In the middle of it is essentially this huge marshland that would be inappropriate to take your army through.

Rome wouldn't, you know, no one would advise it you'd lose a whole bunch of guys. So what does Hannibal do? They don't think I'm coming that way. I'm going to fucking pull the same thing I pulled in the Alps and I'm heading through that swamp. Yeah. He ends up getting stung in the eye or bit in the eye by a bug. Was that how we got pink eye?

Yep. And then it gives him conjunctivitis because, you know, there's no way to fucking fight infections and you can't rub all the oil in your eyes. Maybe you can't, and that's how he ended up going blind. But the guy goes blind in one eye. You didn't think one of his guys like stole his pillow and rubbed it up against the elephant's ass because they got tired of him riding it. He got the ball to fart on the great Hannibal's story.

Probably not. But apparently there was some, like, later on mythology that believe that Hannibal was a Cyclops because he did just have the one eye that he could see out of. So a little bit of the morphing of, like, trying to make this guy sound like the biggest monster that you could. Yeah. All right.

We're getting ready to get into another battle. Before we do that, we're going to take quick bathroom break. Well, hey, there, all you sexy historians, how you guys doing? It is time for socials. Where can they find us on Instagram? If they want

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All right, the hits keep coming. We come to the Battle of Lake Tresamine? Tresamine, I think. Tresamine, eh? Yeah, you just, picture what an Italian would say Tresamine. This whole idea of trasmine is I feel like this was

the Romans getting desperate and some people trying to go into business for themselves that just doesn't end up turning out the right way because shit what's his name? It ends up being Gaius Flaminus. Skipio though. Oh, okay.

Skipio rushed in. Skipio wanted that glory and he didn't really, he was goaded into going to war. He played Hannibal's game and he lost. What did you say that this dude's name was? The guy that ends up, so again, we have the two armies that are split, one of them under Flaminus, and then the other one is under, oh, I just saw his name, Servillis.

Once they figure out what Hannibal's doing going through the Marsland, he's already kind of head of him. one of them has to kind of like get out of their position and go cut them off. Well, the one that ends up meeting them in this battle is Gaius Flaminus. And as the name suggests, the battle is on Lake Tresumain. So, well, it ends up on Lake Tresumain. It ends up on Lake Tresumain. And there's basically because the, because Hannibal and his forces get there first,

I'm trying to think of what the name of, what's the name of the area between the mountains? in the water, they called it something. Floodplain? It's not a floodplain. I'm trying to remember what it was called. Anyway, there's a technical word for the area between essentially mountains that you couldn't really take a bunch of troops and then, you know, the water source right next to it. Kind of think of like in 300, how like there's the mountains to the side, then the cliffs in the

ocean. They're trying to get through that area. Yeah. But it's not super funneled like that. But it's the only place that you can essentially take your troops through. So Hannibal is marching his troops and they're going around the north side of the lake and they come to one of these areas and Hannibal looks around and he's like, well, I know we got guys behind us trying to come up on us. This is a really good fucking place for an ambush. And so he takes his guys and takes them back up into the mountains after getting past this little area and has them basically set up like almost a false camp.

Has them start building fires, getting all this kind of stuff set up to make it look like. Hannibal and they were sending up their camp. His goal is to essentially draw the Romans in to this little area between the mountains and the water and then basically ambush them from the mountainside to where they have nowhere to go. Their whole, the way that they entered into this area, I like to play this sometimes with Hanowks.

We were talking before the pod about who's the good guys and who is the bad guys. Hannibal, good leader, Hannibal, bad person. as they're heading down towards this Lake Trezamine, along the way is they're plundering and raising these villages. They're killing all men, whether they're soldiers or just normal, like villagers. And an argument for bad guy is he's going through

and just killing these people because they're all Roman sympathizers. An argument for good leader is this used to be Gaul land, the Gaul used to live there before they were pushed out by the Romans and the Romans took the area because it was fertile and it was right by the lake. There's belief that maybe Hannibal was letting the Golic people

that had lived there before just go ahead and kill the people that were resettling their land. Which is probably, I would say, a good leader thing to try to keep your guys morale up by going through. That's a morale booster. And as a bonus, ladies and gentlemen,

I'm going to let you murder the people that lived on your ancestral land. Sign us up. Yeah, I feel like that's a good leader move. Maybe that's better than the bad guy move. So again, kind of going along with the strategy of how this goes, it's not like the Romans are just following them, and they march their whole army into this area.

They're essentially having these scouting parties that are riding miles ahead of the army. So the scouting party gets into this area. They start seeing like the smoke in the distance up in the hills from these campfires, and they're like, oh, shit, that has to be the camp. So they end up going and reporting back to Gaius. Gaius, you know, they go ahead and set their camp a little ways away from the lake and then are going to, you know, form up their troops and march on it.

They end up marching right into this area. And as the front of the said the front of them got past essentially kind of the choke point and how it kind of looks as far as how it was set up is if you're looking at a surface. At the very top of the circle, imagine the circle is the lake. You have the Romans coming and hugging kind of the edge of the circle. And then from the top above them, the entirety of Hannibal's army just sandwiches them between the water and the mountains. And there's no place for them to go. There's no retreat.

You can't, you know, you're getting pushed back to the lake, which means the terrain is probably not great either. So you're unable to really rally or perform any type of strategy. And he ends up having the front of it cut off by his Spanish and African. infantry, they essentially form the blockade across the front of it, so they're not able to escape going forward. He has his light troops back essentially then kind of going from right to left would be like his light troops all moving in. Then he has down a little bit further to the left, the gulls pushing down on them, and then in the rear is where he brings in his cavalry, because they're faster and they can swarm around the back of the Roman lines and keep them from escaping that way.

So he traps this entire army in there And it's just a fucking slaughter When you say Trap them get them behind their lines They weren't in fighting lines No they were Because they thought they still had They thought they were gonna sneak up on the fucking

On Hannibal's camp Yeah Because they hadn't been met with any opposing force yet They thought they were being sneaky So they weren't I mean they were in their marching formation Yeah But no they were not formed up in their lines

you caught them with their togas down. They said this is one of the first recorded, successful, large-scale military ambush has ever, like, ever pulled off. Oh, part of the reason was it was an ambush was because there was still, like, morning fog. They had chosen an area where the fog rolled off the lake enough to be able to hide this many people. And this Battle of Trans- Can you fucking even imagine that? No. All you hear is it's just quiet.

It's early in the morning. There's fog rolling across this lake. It's obscuring your vision. You just hear the chunk of everyone marching right next to you. And then you just hear, and you look up into the fucking hills. And there's just like, should we talk about how they fought and what some of them were wearing or not wearing?

I like that you're going into this because these Gaulish people, Gaulics, whatever you want to call the multiples, Gauls, they got a bad reputation. I think the Romans really didn't like the Gauls just because they never really pulled a punch. Like when they could shit on the Gauls, they're like, we're going to shit on the Gauls. A lot of their, along with what Chris is going to talk about, which doesn't surprise me,

and I don't know if maybe this was just like we need to make these guys look as bad as possible. All the writings of the Gauls, when they went into war, was they would always start out hot, and then by midday when the sun was out and beating down on them, they would just kind of start to give up and they would leave the battlefield. Like they just got lazy after they'd given like such a hard effort in a fight. Yeah, they had no, what would you consider like battle endurance? And like no heart. Like you didn't want to be there.

They had always said that they were petty enough that they would just leave, um, leave a troop if they could to get away. Yeah, they would turn tail and run it like, yeah, they would be the first to leave. So they were just absolutely hated on for some reason by all these scholars. and that pales in comparison to how they may have fought. These guys fought, as it's reported, fucking naked, holding only their fucking weapons because they believe nature would protect them.

So I'm just trying to put myself in this mindset. You hear this scream and you see these fucking dudes running down this hill, fucking carrying battle axes on broadswords, fucking fully nude, just charging at you. Like, that has to be just a psychological fuck. Like, what am I seeing?

What's going on? before you know it, they're fucking chopping your friend's heads off. That's got to be the one time in your life that you wish your dick was smaller, right? Or like the smallest that it could be. You wish you had a micro penis? I don't know. If it's long and you're swinging around in battle. I don't know how you don't have like fear shrinkage.

Yeah, well, maybe you do. Or you get the fear of boner. Or maybe that's your jam and like the blood, just the bloodletting and all that kind of stuff is what gets your dick rock hard. You're either the tiniest that you've ever been or the hardest that you've ever been. Yeah, there's no in between. You find out a lot about your fellow soldiers and what their arousal state is when you fight. And you don't want to stop too quickly if you're in the front of the line. Well, as with most ambushes, the losses on Hannibal's side were extremely light compared to the Romans.

The Romans end up losing at this one, 25,000 killed or captured. Yeah, nearly their entire force. So their entire force for this thing, Hannibal had 50,000 plus. You don't really need to get down the cavalry and how much shit, because this was just an ambush. Flaminius had 25,000. Because they had split it between him and the other guy. Together, I think they had somewhere close to 50.

Yeah. Because they split them. So pretty much his entire force is just annihilated. And the ones that were able to get away, because I guess for some reason, Hannibal always left his midsection a little too thin because there was always a way that they could poke through and escape on. Like a certain amount would always be able to break the center

and get through. I think in this one what I heard is it was the soldiers at the front of the line, like 6,000 of them. And this goes into who gets captured. It's not 25,000 killed. It's killed or captured. Most of them were killed. Yeah, because they still capture the ones that get away. Exactly. So like 6,000 guys end up before they kind of close the door on the front of this and turn this into a killbox. Six thousand guys, I think, end up getting away. But then they're actually recaptured by Hannibal's army and like Adam said probably some not so great stuff happened to him um the chick asked me this uh when i was telling her what we were doing and i was talking to her about body losses where do you put 20,000 dead people you strip them and you leave them

but do you stack them like court wood or do you just go from body to body and take what you want i think you kind of that you don't think they piled them up nice for the the Romans to come through? You think it'd just... I think they wanted to leave the battlefield looking like it probably did. Okay, yeah. That makes sense. So they could see what kind of destruction and how, and what had happened.

You don't want to be the Roman cleanup crew that has to... Do you even send a cleanup crew? I mean, you probably send not... You probably send someone to see like a runner to see for communications going back and forth. Yeah. I'm sure when they set up camp, they had sent runners to the other army.

And then when the other army comes up, it comes back or their scouts come up and they see that they're like nope not fucking going here well that you're probably not taking the bodies back to rome for burial don't really see the transport of whatever well i was going to say 25 kill or captured so there's not there's not probably yeah there's not enough guys in your army to carry back everyone else no and this this one was a pretty big blow for rome i think i think this was finally they were pretty pissed after Trebia happened. Tresamine just kind of sent this message back to Rome.

Like, ah, shit. This isn't going to work out too well. This second fighting force you were talking about, not Flaminius's, but the other guy. Oh, yeah, who was it? Servilis. Servilis. Servilis.

Yeah. Servilis sent his cavalry out to check and see where Flaminius's forces. were to kind of keep an eye on him and follow him. The Numidian cavalry happened to pick them off on the way and they wiped out Cervillus'

entire cavalry, which rendered his entire forces basically useless because you need the cavalry to be able to fight any sort of intelligent war, you would say? Any sort of intelligent battle?

Yeah, 100%. If your enemy has cavalry, how much, you know, horses are infinitely faster than people. So there's no way to keep someone from just circling around behind you. I don't know how you, regardless of what position you were to create a line or a V or however it was, the horses are always going to be faster getting around behind you. So you have to have infantry in order to be essentially effective on the battlefield at this time. And by losing your cavalry, sorry, cavalry by losing your cavalry at that point, you are essentially done.

So in the span of one ambush and one cavalry raid Hannibal's forces rendered two entire units just useless They weren't called units what were they called? Legions. Legions, that's right. Legion was like a number of troops. I can't remember exactly. Like 4,000 troops or something like that

and they could raise 10 legions. Yeah, something like that. So that was actually the big thing that happened in 217. Like I said, these things, you have these big, battles where you're essentially losing most of, if not all of your troops, and Rome has to have time to fucking kind of like gather itself

back up and is like, what are we going to fucking do here? This guy is just wiping the floor with us and with each of these victories he's taking out defenses between here and Rome and he's going to get closer to Rome itself. I also think that I saw and maybe you had the accurate number on this. After

these three battles, these three years of battles, the number of Roman men over the age of conscription lost was 150,000. It was like, I think it was a third of the adult male population of Rome. That was how many people were lost.

That's a hell of a lot of people. Throughout the entirety of this Second Punic War. For these three battles. Okay. So just for these three battles alone, that was how much they had lost. Total. I think it was like 150 total thousand

So after this complete and utter smashing along the lake The loser at the lake Rome decides to build up The loser at the lake They build up a force that I don't think had ever been seen before I think the total Legion building that they did

The number was like 67 to 80,000 infantry? No, it was, it was 86,000 plus. 86,000, 400, yeah. Is the number that they gave out. So Rome essentially has to go back and kind of go back to the drawing board and they're like, well, fuck, we can't keep

sending these smaller forces out because we just keep losing. Well, because you're kind of moving in again, this being in June, you do have to start looking forward to the colder months and you're probably not going to put your campaign on hold. So after the battle, Hannibal ends up moving into the, is it the Follernum? Is that what it's called?

Yeah. Well, you have it written up there. The Follernum, it's basically this river valley that's surrounded by mountains. So it's a pretty advantageous position where he's able to winter his troops. Yeah, they cross the Apennines again. For some reason, these Apennine mountains must not be shit because they just kind of crisscross back and forth. It's probably hard to be followed too. Yeah, that is very true.

If you can make it through, it's definitely a good place to, you know, that it's, going to be pretty safe. This whole situation ends up getting sort of oh boy, I don't really know how you would say the most embarrassing thing that could happen to somebody in a battle.

The cattle thing? Oh, I didn't hear about that. The cattle thing? Okay, all right. So they're in this river valley. This gentleman, he's a consult. I think he actually is the Roman ruler too at the same time

because he's got this at the end of his name. Quintus Fabius Maximus. Yes, because he's the one that had the Fabian strategy. Yeah, okay. So Quintus Fabius Maximus is the commander that is now chasing Hannibal. He was the Roman dictator, and you're like, well, Roman dictator, Caesar, all that kind of stuff.

They would appoint when essentially Rome was in crisis, they would put someone in with emergency powers that could just make the decisions. And so in this scenario, I think it was a six to nine, month run that they would have in, then the power would go back or he'd have to be put back into power. So essentially this guy, because of the chaos going through, you know, Italy, because of Hannibal, they're like, okay, we got to give emergency powers to this guy and make this guy

dictator to deal with this threat. But also we need to risk him going out on the battlefield to fight for some reason. Well, at this point, you know, this guy isn't going out on the actual battlefield itself. This guy is commanding back from the camp and maybe going and being at the back the line, but at the same time, you're electing this guy on the sole condition that this is what he's going to do. If something happens and he sends out another army and that army loses

without him there, he's fucking done. They're like, well, why weren't you there? So he really has no choice. And plus, dude, the prestige for this guy, they're giving him the power and he's like, you appointed me to do this. I will be the one that takes

Hannibal down. The juice is probably worth to squeeze for him, too. For him, definitely. 100%. So while they're down in this valley, Hannibal's troops go through everywhere. They clear out all the grain, cattle, very important, and just any other supplies that they can get in this valley.

And this valley has different exits, but what Fabius did was he essentially sealed him in. All of the mountain passes and all of the river passings throughout the valley, he had sent troops in to block off. So there was no way of him to get out of this little bowl that they had been in. And as they're trapped inside,

Ham was like, well, we can't fight them directly because they have the high ground in every situation. Yeah, they had crazy defensive advantage in this. It would be essentially, because you know, these are very like shallow or narrow passes. So it's not like he can

march his troops in. They're just going to get cut down. Well, yeah, you're, these guys are up above you. Something that they dealt with in the Alps with some of those hostile tribes. Yeah. was in the Alps, they would just roll boulders off of cliffs to try to smash people and kill them. So they could do the same thing. Finally, Hannibal realizes we cleared this area out.

We need a place to stay for the wintertime, but we also need enough shit that we can take and have for the wintertime and through the spring because stuff just doesn't automatically grow back in the spring. So we have to get out. Well, and at the same time, too, all that has to happen is when they're trapped there, they're just going to keep sending more troops. Romkins and more and more troops until finally they have enough troops. They're like, let's just march in from different directions on these guys. So it was a timing issue for not only resources,

but like, we got to fucking get the fuck out of here before they have a chance to completely pen us in. And the way that he did it is three stooges-esque. So Hannibal decides that they needed to escape. They needed to escape out of this mountain pass by Mount Colicula. and they decided that that's the one. There were 4,000 troops that were stationed in this mountain pass, and then there were other garrisons that were stationed down below.

And that is where Fabius was was down below. He wasn't up in the mountain pass. Edible looks at 2,000 of the cattle that they had collected down in the area. I did hear about this. That's right. Yep. And he tied flaming branches to their... Like torches to each of their...

Antlers. Or horns. Yeah. And he sent 2,000 of them and 2,000 light infantry behind them up into this mountain pass in the middle of the night to catch them off guard. And I didn't realize this until I heard it about three times. The reason that they tied the torches to the horns of the cows or the cattle is because it would look like there's a bunch of men running up the hill with torches. Yeah, you would see two. It would be like the...

I thought they just assumed. that the cows were going to run through there and light everything on fire. Okay. Like, I thought it was like a... Like living bombs. Yeah, we weren't trying to pull a fast one. You're like a Hollywood movie where you hear the bumbling and then all of a sudden you a cow breaks through the door and got flaming fucking torches on its horns.

Yeah, it was supposed to make it look like there were troops moving up through the trees. That makes so much more sense now. Because they were so far away, you would just see these little dots of light and everything. Like, they're obviously on the move up this way. We need to move troops over here. It was enough of a scare that all of the troops. groups that were guarding that mountain pass went ahead and vacated

and the light infantry chased them toward it didn't they go cut they went to actually go cut them off no no it scared them oh they they were caught off guard it was way too close because they had snuck up to really get a good run at them so by the time they realized what was going on

instead of just holding the line and fighting they just all fled and the light infantry that followed the cattle went up and made sure to clear the way everybody else busted on through the mountain and pass and got out of the mountains. And then the next day they sent the heavy infantry back to collect all the light infantry that

had stayed there to clear the path. Probably didn't give a shit about the cattle. But Fabius was just ridiculed when this got back to Rome. They're like, what the fuck, man? He beat you with flaming cows? You're supposed to be our leader? Keystone cops.

Yeah. We call you Maximus and you just got tricked by some dude with 2,000 cows? A guy that you've just been claiming is a savage. Yeah. He outsmarted you. You got outsmarted by a savage. So Fabius, not to be deterred, just is on the hunt for Hannibal and his troops again. He's hot on their tail. He's trying to follow him around. He sends runners ahead of the routes where he thinks he's going to take and tells all the farmers to either burn their crops or bring everything into the town.

So it's not easy to loot and get to because you still have to feed a ton of people. and eventually as wintertime sets in the Romans don't want to keep chasing because we have this weird off time where you just don't go to war because it's too cold in Italy which are Italian winters that bad? I guess maybe around the Alps.

It's elevation man. Yeah, that's true. It's very true. Watch shame upon movies. They're always skiing fucking the Alps or some shit. Or even further down because the Alps weren't really a part of Italy

at that time but yeah, I'm guessing it's, there's areas where it's, it doesn't take, I don't think it takes much snow or much of a winter to make passing with, your big ass army pretty difficult. Yeah.

And that was until, like I say, until winter sets in, then the Romans decide they can't keep pursuing because it's getting too cold. The Cartheneaginian troops ended up finding a place called Gerunium, and that was where they stayed that winter. Wake up, come back out, spring of 2016, BCE, Hannibal hits a jackpot. they sees a supply depot in Cane and it was a supply depot that the Romans were using

so it was between where Fabius's boys had stayed for the wintertime and their supply line. Basically what they were using to be resupplied probably. Yeah. Yep. So you get automatic replenishment coming out of wintertime. That's going to be huge. We get two new Roman consoles that come after them, Gaius Varo.

and Lucius Paulus. And when I was talking about raising all those legions to get that 86,000 troop load, these are the boys that had the 86,000 troops. They split them each into two sections. I think they each had like 43,000 or 40,000, however you want to break it down. And they were just kind of these two roaming bodies.

And it was, one of them was, who was it? You're trying to think who was the smart one, and who was the dumb one? A little bit of that. Well, they're both the dumb ones because of how they do this. But one of them was the leader of the other one. I don't remember which one it was. There's no way of knowing.

But they end up becoming like co-generals and combining their forces. And their strategic pattern is that one of them runs the team one day and the other one runs the team the next day. This is the most assonite thing. I think I might have heard of in this entire fucking, in this entire telling of history, is you have these two Roman generals who basically because they're each in charge of half of the forces are like, I want to lead, no, I want to lead.

And finally someone was like, boys, boys, settle down. Okay, every other day, one of you is going to be the boss. And Hannibal was notorious for actually knowing a lot about his enemy's strengths and weaknesses and actually knowing who was leading the enemy troops and trying to find out information on them. He had spies all around the area. Like I said, this was a very intelligent guy. It was very strategically brilliant.

And he knew enough that between Paulus and Vero, one of them was much more impulsive and like out for glory and desperate to prove himself than the other. I'm trying to remember who was who. I can't recall. Yeah. He actually. waited until he knew the day in which that person would be in charge.

And that's when he decided to actually instigate this battle of Knais. Well, he would test him. On different days, he would send out different parties and see what the reaction, different skirmish parties and see what the reactions were. And that was how he started to figure out what day he needed to plan this on based on the reactions to the skirmishes. So the battle Kenei, the battle of Knais, is it's still looked upon in history

as one of the most brilliantly fought battles by any military commander. And it's the first instance in recorded history of what's called the double envelopment. For those of you not familiar with warfare, double envelopment is essentially where you have the ability to, on each flank of the enemy, to then close those flanks in,

and you completely close off the enemy. So you're basically closing a trap behind the enemy and forming it into just a kill circle or whatever you want to call it. A bare hug of death. A bear hug of death is the most apt way to put it. So after looking over and kind of developing a strategy, this is what Handel comes up with. You have 80,000 Roman troops.

This is the largest army ever fielded by Rome up to this date to try to stop this guy. He has 50,000 troops. So he's already outnumbered by 36,000 plus troops. What he does is the Romans are going to fight in their normal three lines with how, having, you know, the front guys being their best, then you have the younger guys behind, than the oldest guys in the rear. You then do have cavalry out to each side.

What Hannibal does is he lines up his strategically weakest infantry in the middle, and then has essentially kind of like five sets of troops, or six, sorry, seven branches of troops going out from the middle. When he marched them out, the traditional way to march in a pitch battle is your entire line was level. straight line across like the Romans were doing it. When he came into battle, he actually had the weakest ones out in front.

Almost think of it like if you have a bowl, you're holding the bull out in front of you and the front of it is the furthest thing out from you, the bottom of the bowl. So it's basically a concave, not concave. Is it a convex when it goes out? Yeah. So it's an arc.

This is the Mighty Ducks. This is the V. Yes, that's, yep, exactly. I think that's where Gordon Pompeii got this idea for that offense. So on the very, very outside, before you get out to the cavalry, he puts two of his groups of African infantry, and they're just out on the very, very far wings. Well, when the Romans end up approaching,

they're pushing in, and they start to actually gain ground, and instead of forming into a line and just holding position, that weakest portion, the Romans would always get a few troops through, it wasn't uncommon for them to actually break the lines of Hannibal's troops, but because the infantry was so fast it could get around behind them. So they knew that this was something that had occurred. Well, once you punch a hole in the middle of something, the natural reaction is to get as many men through as possible.

And when you see, it's like trying to go to a concert or you're standing in line for something. As soon as that blockage is removed, everyone is moving toward that as quickly as possible to try to funnel through. So as the Romans are pushing against and start battling against his front, line the front of it which has now been pointed out flying v style that person then starts to drop back and those troops drop back to where now it's like an inverted v and as that happens it ends up becoming almost like an arc like a a concave arc coming in well what happens is

because that part that's getting pressed back all of a sudden all the romans start kind of shifting in toward that portion that's giving the most ground they're starting to kind of get packed in There. Think of it, I was trying to think of an analogy today. Think of it if you had like a blanket that you had stretched out. Like you used to make a pillow fork. So if you had it stretched out over the chairs. Yeah. If you were to take like a tennis ball or something and you were to drop it, it would sag in the middle and that's where that ball would go to.

Anything that you drop at that point, the more it sags, the tighter, all that stuff is going to get packed in the middle. That's what's happening here is as this line of Hannibal starts to sag back, all the troops start to go ahead and kind of get compacted and compacted. the two sides that he had of the African troops that were on the side, they never move. So as they're giving ground, they never move strategically as far as like getting into the battle yet. They never kind of shore up the weaknesses in behind or anything. No, their strategy, because the Numidians were on the outside too,

so the cavalry was on the outside too. They were on the very outside, but he had two sections of African infantry on each side. And as they actually, because all of a sudden now you have the Roman line technically coming in because it's starting to push forward, as they move past this African infantry, the African infantry kind of just moves up and starts to kind of push them in from the side. And as you start to push them in from the side, all of a sudden, everybody's starting to get

compacted and compacted. And when you have the Romans fighting, the only people doing the fighting are the guys on the very front that are able to fight the other guys. All the guys back in those lines that are now getting compact and sandwiched, Those guys haven't even started fighting yet. They're basically, they can't fight because they can't get out to the front line. So they're useless. As this is occurring, the Numidians basically steamroll the Roman cavalry out to one side.

They were T.J. Watt on the outside. Exactly. Steam roll them on one side. You then have the Spanish and the Golic cavalry on the other side. They go in and smash into that side of the Roman cavalry and Desmated it. And then as you start to get these troops retreating, They don't pursue the infantry, or I'm sorry, they don't pursue the cavalry to chase them down. They immediately turn to the side and both cavalry then swing in behind, and that's where you get the double envelopment.

This was so effective, and they formed this killbox so tight with all of these soldiers, and this is the number you were getting at earlier, I think. Yeah. The casualties on the Roman side are between who you talk to and who the sources are, between 67,000 and 80,000 troops that were, killed. Well, the other thing with that number two, with the 80,000 kind of at max for everybody, Fabius's troops had also been enveloped into these lines, too. So however many troops Fabius had, that was how many troops came in with this supposed maybe 80,000 troops.

And I'd be willing to say that it was on the higher end of that just because the Romans weren't playing around anymore. Hannibal only lost between 5,000 and 7,000. Yeah. Yeah. And it was probably just the Gauls in the middle, the light infantry in the middle. It was probably the weakest guys in the middle that took the most of the beating. But the comparison of, even on the high side, let's say the 80,000 and only losing 7,000 men in the process.

At this point, like, who the fuck does Rome have left to send out? He got a lot of guys. They got a lot of allies. I think did you say that 10,000 of that 80,000 was the Allied garrison? so they had gotten 10,000 other troops from other friendly areas. So that was the only contribution out of that 80,000 was 10,000 that they got from other places in Rome. And that's all that they're sending. They're like, we're not going to send you anymore after this.

You got all of our own guys killed. So 70,000 Roman men. There were so many of these like consoles or lesser guys that were out here. Because that's how you gained essentially political status. It was almost through military. accolades. And you weren't fighting. No, no, no.

You were commanding troops or doing all that kind of stuff. But like... You took a picture while you were there. So you had a ton of these senators who were previously military guys are still served in some capacity in the military, but because of their status,

they were also serving on the Senate. I think they said somewhere in the neighborhood of 80 members of the Roman Senate were actually killed during this battle. And there was only, what, 180 or 150? Roman senators. Do you hear how Carthage found out how well this went?

The rings? Yeah. You want to talk about the rings? Go ahead. So they sent, I don't believe it was one of his brothers. I think it was a runner that they had sent back to Carthage a little bit later on. They asked him how the war effort was going. He said very, very well, they said, well, do you have any proof of this? and he walked up to the council table

and he dumped a sack full of, I believe it was 80 brass rings that were... The rings of a senator. That were worn by the Roman senators. And everybody just kind of looked at it, shocked. Like, holy shit. They killed 80,000... Or they've killed 80 senators along with all these other battles.

Like, if you have 80 senators' rings, you've done very well for yourself. Why are you sending all your... fucking senators. Yeah. Yeah. It's probably desperation, too, huh? I, that to me, when I read that number, I was just like,

Jesus, like, can, like, imagine the comparison of that of being like, and this is probably actually a fair comparison, something that probably should occur, but like literally sending in people members of Congress that have to go and oversee and, like, fight these, or at least monitor these pitch battles like this, so they're at some level of risk. do you think it was like that well I guess if they died they died still or do you think it's like they do

now like when they go over and visit the troops and they're brought to an Air Force base it's like extra secured to make sure that they don't die in an incident over there and then they wave to them and then they come back or do you think these guys like had weapons I think they probably had like the full breastplate

armored the hats and all that stuff it's like you know when Napoleon would oversee his troops he was never fighting he was back at the back yet he was still commanding doing all that, but he was there with, like, his, maybe his jacket with his medals on it or something like that. So you had guys in, like, ceremonial positions. Yeah.

I guess it's, it just... Or just kind of token positions that didn't do a whole lot. You were there just for kind of the prestige and kind of the, to be able to say that you served in the military. They were also so vain enough, though, that they decided to wear their senatorial rings out there. You couldn't leave that at home? I think once you remember, maybe it was just, like, like, a fucking class ring or some

shit. But at the same time, like, they had... had no way of thinking that they were going to lose this. That 80,000 troops they knew they had him outnumbered. The only, I mean, and what did they tell themselves? The only victories, the big victories that he's won.

One time he fought against an equal amount of troops and yeah, he beat us. And then the second time he ambushed him with more troops and he beat all of them. As long as we have more troops and he's not ambushing us, we should totally be able to beat him. If we can face off in a fair fight with more troops, there's no way

we can beat Hannibal. and not only did you lose to Hannibal, you lost almost maybe 12 times as many people as he did. That's a bad look for the Roman Empire. And it pretty much shook up everybody's belief. Like all of these allies with Rome in Italy heard about this war and heard about this big loss. We're like, oh, shit.

We probably need to start getting nice to this Hannibal guy because eventually the Romans are going to quit requesting people and they're just going to start making us go fight them. Yeah. So maybe if Hannibal sweeps through our town, we throw up some go Hannibal go signs and give some free beer out and just... Maybe we start seeing which way the wind is blowing.

Yeah, yep. And start maybe kind of leaning into that. And Hannibal kind of had two ideas. Hannibal had the idea of them having the biggest military victory probably at that time in history, or the most losses, at least, the most kills, do you go for the big prize?

Do you go for Rome? Or do you try to continue to maybe strengthen your backing to go just walk into Rome instead of having to fight the Romans? Just looking at it from like a glance, you would think to yourself,

you just literally took out probably everybody or a majority of anybody who's standing between you or Rome. So if you're going to do it, this is when your enemy's at its weakest. The hindsight says once you get to Rome, what are you able to do once you get there? Because Rome is a fortified city. It's got walls. It's going to take a siege. It took you eight months to siege and capture Saguntum. How long do you think it's going to take you in an unfriendly territory with resources back in Carthage where they might be able to start sending you stuff,

but it's not going to be in the amounts or the capacity that you need to to Rome. And plus, if you're just stationed around Rome, Rome isn't on the coast, which means that all that has to happen is wherever those ships land to resupply you. Some of the troops still remaining just have to get between you and those troops. So him, he could have gotten to Rome, but I don't think he could have accomplished his goals once he got there. So for him to be,

basically be like, well, it's going to take Rome a little while to build an army back up. So they're just going to do that. But at the same time, I've won these three huge victories. Everybody in this area has got to be thinking that the writing's on the wall for Rome and is probably going to come over to my side. And I can probably just travel around and start building up even a larger force. And then when Rome sends out another force, because again, this is a war of attrition where you can only lose so many people before you don't have.

any other people to call upon. Yeah. And so maybe that was kind of his idea is like if they send out more troops, we'll go ahead and kill him, but we're just going to keep building up our strength. And maybe he had thought or he believed or maybe Carthage had told him, hey, we're going to start sending you stuff. Like you're in a very strong position.

Like we're going to go and start sending more troops and start committing more resources to this. Well, at that given time, too, I think part of the. belief that he was trying to spread among these other areas that had been allies of Rome was if you help us take Rome out we don't want to rule you we just don't want Rome's grip all over like we we don't want to take your area over and make you a part of us we you can go back to being you but just don't want there to be a Rome yeah yeah Rome's Rome's our problem here Rome can't protect you right now just we're here remember Rome camp Rome can't Rome

can't protect itself. Well, yeah, we don't want to take you over. You guys can go back to being you after this. We just want to make sure that Rome doesn't have you. You're an asset to anybody that has you, but we don't really want you. Well, and in the most advantageous position he's been at this point, he actually pushes for peace, even doing as much as returning captured soldiers, and the Romans were basically like, nope, fuck you, no peace.

This is when they adopted the Fabian strategy. Was it George Bush when he goes, we don't negotiate with terrorists. No, watch this golf shot. No watch this drive. This is, uh, that's the Romans doing that. Pretty much. They think that even though they've gone through and taken over all these different

lands, there is an argument to me made here. I'm not saying that Hannibal wasn't the wrong for doing this, but he did come to them, but they also took over the land that he had to get through to get to them. I don't think there's really, it's just two countries. I don't really have a... It's fascinating that he's able to just steamroll him so much is the fascinating part of this.

I don't really have a side, but I know enough about Rome to know that they were fucking taking over huge areas too, so they probably had some of it coming to him. I need a heel in a face to fight. You can make Rome the heel. Rome can be the heel in this situation.

So the Romans developed this thing, and it's named after Fabius Maximus, or whatever's name was. It's called the Fabian strategy. And basically, they're like, okay, we're not going to fight this guy anymore. We obviously can't beat this guy. So what we're going to do is we're just going to go ahead

and kind of fall him around and keep an eye on him, but no one's allowed to engage this guy in an actual fight. If he starts trying to fight you or starts turning his troop, you need to get the fuck out of there. We're going to try to basically just by war of attrition and by the fact that they're eventually going to run out of resources or aren't going to be able to

be backed up enough, at some point they're going to have to turn around and go home. We're going to just try to almost take pot shots at him and everything, maybe do like little raids and everything just to kind of harass and weaken them as much as we can, but we're not going to meet them in like full on battle. This strategy was adopted, though, because Hannibal didn't make the run at Rome.

Yeah. Hannibal decided to go out and politic to try to garner all this support, and his generals weren't pumped about it. Most of them were actually. Well, the guy that... The guy that everyone remembers, or not everyone, but everyone will now remember the quote from is like one of the only guys that was from a small group of the centers. I think a lot of them saw if he presented it the way of like, yeah, guys, we can get to Rome,

but what are we going to do once we get there? Right now? He hasn't been wrong yet either. Correct. Hey, I'm telling you guys, you guys don't have to fight right now. We can just go live off the land and kind of like keep building up support and then we can march on road. Wouldn't you rather be stronger?

Our guys are wounded. Let's take care of the guys that we need to. Let's get more horses, more cavalry, all that good shit. and basically these sections of Rome were just taken over and parts of Rome burned because he was just kind of doing his thing and there was really no one out there to stop him and the one general that was his critic and was like no we should probably attack Rome told him Hannibal you know how to attain a victory but you don't know what to do with it I can't believe he didn't kill that guy just for saying that from all of the historical stuff

that came out it said he was very open to getting advice and everything like that from as commanders. It was one of the reasons he was so successful. So he was welcome. You know, differences of opinion were welcome. It was just if someone tried to enact action to try to counter what he was doing. I think it would have been a problem, but this guy just saying, hey, I think we should do this and saying his little remark about it. I don't think that bugged him too much. The guy was the head of his cavalry, which means it was one of his most valuable resources. I don't see him really being able to get rid of that guy and being as effective as he was. He was smart enough not to do that. I also do think, too, that the guy probably had enough belief in Hannibal that he would take it as criticism.

Like, he wouldn't take it as like, I need to kill you. This wasn't a tote, Hitler situation where he voices his opinion. Yeah. And then riding his horse out of camp, all of a sudden, the guy takes an arrow on the back of the head that they claim as an accident. Well, there was so much, I just, Hannibal blows me away with the way that he was a general. And up into this point, we're going to kind of speed through the next little bit because not a whole lot of note. Well, there's not really shit that happens, but it's kind of a lot of like just little wars and little battles. Well, up to this point, because of the Fabian strategy, there wasn't really these big engagements.

What's crazy to me is that this is only in like two years. Yeah. That he's actually been going through Italy like this. He fought three wars and three years, and he won three times. And so, yeah, they're just hanging out. Italy. He's got basically his brothers actually have other sections of his army and everything and are

basically splitting up. So they have enough men that they're able to split their forces. They're trying to gather more resources, take over more area. And during this time, he does get into these little battles. He wins most of them. But during this period, his brothers are actually killed. Mago, I think

it is. He's killed in a fight with a battle with the Romans. They cut off his head. They take it and transport it across the country and then throw it into Hannibal's camp. It was the other one. Well, that's, we'll get into that said. They were going to meet at war. And at the front of the war lines, these Romans just pitched this head out there. They had them retrieved the head and they brought them to Hannibal.

He's like, oh, that's my brother. And it was, it wasn't Mago. It was the one that was coming back over. We'll talk about it. Hasdrable? He was in Spain. Okay. And he was coming to meet up. Oh, gotcha. So yeah, this weird little kind of stalemate happens through what Chris was talking about. And they ended up deciding to move into Campania, which is where they were before in southwest Italy. So they're like below Rome now. Yeah. Which is crazy to think about like you just don't go into enemy territory and set up shop where you're closest to then your territory.

You actually come all the way around and now you're essentially sitting south of Rome where you're technically, yes, close. closer to Carthage, but you're not closer to the people that can support you land-based over in Iberia. No, and not only can you not get that help from Iberia, but just saying Carthage, he just had three of, like, the biggest victories that you could have against Rome. And they still weren't trying to figure out a way to get him reinforcements, to get him resupplied, to get him more money. They weren't, they weren't trying to build him up for, like, the kill shot. No. No, he had no support. So I almost can't blame him for finding Campania, which, excuse me, in southwest Italy, I'm sure it's an absolutely beautiful place. There's worst places in the world to post up.

But his guys kind of got complacent because they weren't out fighting anymore. It was like they were in a comfortable environment, but they weren't home. They were still out living in this foreign land. And as he was reaching out to these different places, he would kind of promise them, he promised compania that he was, that they were going to be like the jewel of Italy. They were going to be the new capital of Italy because they were going to have all this power and influence and protection from Carthage

that they would be the city that everybody in Italy looks at. And so Companis, yeah, we're in. They didn't realize that all the neighboring towns that may have had some issues with Campania wouldn't really be pumped about another major city. Maybe neighbors moving in? Yeah, yeah. So turning some of those places

on and taking the allies from the Romans almost solidified other allies for the Romans to stay with them because these guys are going to take us over eventually. Let's not do that. And they've probably been hearing nightmare stories about this monster that's been burning

and killing people in Rome, which, fair enough, it wasn't like Roman villagers were like trying to do this. They were forced into military service at some point, but at the same time they were just kind of like, yeah, all we've heard is that the Romans are trying to protect us, which they say they've always done since they conquered us however many years ago.

But this guy's essentially killing a lot of people, civilians included. And now he's sitting here being like, oh, so you guys are just moving in next door? Cool. But as they weren't doing anything, there wasn't a whole lot of other movement on the Roman side. There were these little kind of skirmishes and fights. But the Romans weren't losing enough allies to make a difference. And you didn't see the large loss of life that these. big wars had because they just weren't doing it.

Somehow, they got in contact with Philip the 5th of Macedon. He was probably the great, great, great grandchild of Alexander. A descendant of Alexander. And he kind of starts to buddy up with Carthage. They had to deal with Rome. Rome and Greece were both kind of thick as thieves. But Philip decided that maybe Carthage was the right horse to bat,

and is their ineffectiveness kept happening? Philips like, well, wait, back to you guys because I thought you were going to take them over. You're not doing that. And they're like, well, we're trying. We don't have the resources. Can you send us over some guys? Like, no, no, no, I'm a strategic partner in this situation.

Like, I'm going to let you get in. I'm a silent partner. Yeah. I'm going to let you get in. I'm not going to help you get in. And once Philip realized that they weren't really a threat anymore, he pulls his backing and goes back to Rome. So.

Yeah, the longer you're there without making any headway If you're taking over territory and getting little token victories and everything like that, unless you're cutting the head off of the snake, you're not doing anything. You're not solidifying your place. You're setting up shop, but you're not changing the game. What was the Hercules thing with that, the Hydra? Yeah.

He believed that every, or Hannibal believed that every, war that he was fighting and winning, he was just like cutting the head off the hydra, and the only way that Hercules had beat the hydro was he cauterized the wounds instead of continuing slashing or something like that. Well, one of the things Rome did too is because Hannibal couldn't be everywhere at once, the plates that he had gone through and like built up a loyalty and everything. When he had to move on to go to these other areas, Rome would just have reprisals against these areas that were supporting Hannibal

and if Hannibal didn't have troops there, the areas really couldn't do a whole lot to defend themselves against the Roman army. So they were almost showing everybody else what would happen regardless if they side with Hannibal. They were like, this guy hasn't done anything a little while, but you guys are

all siding with him and so there's going to be some punishment. Someone's getting some spankings if that's happening. So you also start to see the support from the local areas start to drive a little bit and then he's not getting any support from Carthage as well. Because I guess they're having to start worrying about kind of their own things.

Like, this isn't, he's extremely successful here, but this also isn't the only thing that's going on. Yeah. They're at war in this, in this second Punic war where, yeah,

they also might be trying to send Roman troops into Iberia. So there still has to be troops there to keep that defended. Rome also has a huge navy. They can also send a ton of troops across right now over to Carthage. So Carthage has to actually keep like a pretty sizable amount of troops to defend it in case Rome is like no no Hannibal's trapped up here we're just going to go ahead and start sending

anyone down and cut the head off the snake in this situation and take over Carthage and then he's got no support it's almost funny that he refused to attack Rome because he knew that he didn't have enough time to get enough supply there to do it

and now he's kind of built his own little area where all Italy has is time to get the supplies to just run him out. That's the thing is, this is kind of, and was kind of a strike while the iron's hot type situation. Where, yeah, he could have maybe moved on Rome if he had the support,

but that window of opportunities is gone. Well, and that was really all this council of 30, this peace party that went against him. The party leader's name was Hano. He kind of plays the just role of spoiler every time. But like we talked about before, going into the, war, there were members of the Peace Party that were more motivated by money than they were by peace. So they threw their support behind Hannibal because they saw that he was getting that dough. Yeah, the hot hand. Yeah, you always ride that hot hand. But now that things that slowed down

and things weren't looking as great, we had a very interesting kind of discussion in research about how a messenger gets back to Carthage from Hannibal. How long does it take? How do you know that he wasn't compromised at some point along the way? How do you know that this actually is one of our messengers and not just like a Roman? Not only that, but you have to have a way to get them to Carthage. So are they heading all the way back to Iberia to a port that's friendly and then taking a ship? Are they trying to sneak a ship somewhere on the shores of Italy to then sneak this person out? Like you have to have some type of vessel to get across back to Carthage.

and who knows how long that could take I would assume that if you're sending out messengers you're doing it several directions in several different ways to make sure that the message gets there you're not just counting on hopefully you're not just counting on one guy yeah well yeah you don't put eggs and yeah that makes sense you sent six guys out of one guy gets in the time frame nothing the gears of this move so slowly

because communication was all by word of mouth or by note and shit so anytime that comes back Hannah's like well they're not really doing anything and they're still asking for more. We didn't give them more when they were winning. Why would we start resupplying them when they're losing? We can't really afford that. Plus, at this point in time, Italy has expanded their area of war to start leaking back into the Iberian Peninsula because they know that now they're at war, whatever they can get their hands on before a peace treaty or before a total destruction

is done, it's good for them. Like Hannibal is also kind of like not trapped, but kind of trapped. Oh yeah. And he's about as far away from Iberies you can get, so he's definitely not going to provide any backup. So the Romans are like, well, he's over here doing this thing distracted. Let's go over here and take this shit. Hannibal's still fighting. That's the thing is he's not losing per se. He's just, it's stagnated. He's just not winning.

To where he's not making enough of an impact with his victories to turn the tide of this. At this point, it's the stillmate in the tug of war. And Hannibal is starting to tire, and he's not really losing your game. getting whooped, but slowly that rope, that tag is inching ever closer to the Rome side. They're just through attrition, they're able to keep kind of like whittling away. Yeah, and while they have him at bay, if they can raise other armies to try to take over this other land, he just gets weaker and weaker. He made a play in 212 BCE for a town called Tarantum. He ends up taking the town. The siege was completed. Everything worked out well, except for all the

escaped Roman soldiers took to I believe it was like a lighthouse on the water or some sort of a building their harbor it had to be like a fort I would assume at that point for like port cities and stuff like that you would have

because most of the harbor was probably used for military purposes for ships that there was probably like the city and then like the harbor which was probably a much more defensible like military type place Yeah, well, and if they can hold them off, they can send somebody out and get a boat to land at the harbor with reinforcements to go ahead and push them back. Yeah.

So not securing that harbor really kind of makes that. Had he secured that harbor, then he's able to get reinforcements from Carthage coming in by scene. Or coming over from Iberia. Yeah. It would have been a huge win for him, but because he took the city and didn't take the harbor, it just didn't really change anything. Kind of bizzled out. And this is where we get to. to what we were talking about before.

There was an effort to merge with his brother, Hustrabal, from the Iberian Peninsula. And as he was coming over to Spain, they were moving up to Apulia in 2007, or 207. Oh, as he was coming over from Spain.

Yeah, to meet with Hasdrabal. He ends up being killed in something called the Battle of Metataris. And after they win the Battle of Metataris, they are the ones that end up going to meet Hannibal. And when those two lines come together, like we said earlier, Hasdrubal's head was passed up to the front of the line, and they just threw it at their feet.

And as soon as Hannibal saw that, he's like, well, he killed him. That's all of our reinforcements. There's not a whole lot that we can do here. Fuck. They ended up battling. He's looking at the back of the head. Please don't want to be him. He's only thing as he turns to end very slowly.

God damn. Who else could this be? Please, my wife? No? Shit, that's a big head. But it all, the battles just, they weren't worth the fight anymore. The Iberian Peninsula ends up being lost to the Romans. Hope in Italy is basically all lost.

Hannibal then gets recalled back to Carthage because at that time, Rome had sent a guy whose name was Cornelius Scipio. the Scipio Jr. that had saved his father in the first battle that Hannibal had had on Roman soil. And this guy gets moved into Sicily. He wants to finish this the way that most Roman battles get finished in their town, or in the adversary's hometown. Yeah, they prefer essentially to fight on like foreign soil. Yeah.

Which makes sense. I mean, think everybody would prefer to fight on foreign soil instead of having to have all the damage. under theirs. That's the one time that winning the championship on the road's not bad. Hannibal was in Italy for 15 years. He doesn't get recalled back to Carthage until 203 BC. Dude, he's there for 15 fucking years. Like that's not like, oh no, I like went and visited Carthage a couple times and then came back. He was the entire time consistently in Italy. at that point he was what 26 when he took over

at that point 15 years later he's 40 plus that's still a young man though I think not back then it wasn't after 15 years of war though 46 is young for a guy that just did 15 years of war well yeah 100 and I think it's just I think

it's old for just anyone in that time I mean people did live longer in those more civilized or at least the more developed areas but he had the smallest chance to live to that age I don't think so. I think he was the safest one. He wasn't in the front lines.

I mean, he did fight with his troops sometimes, but like, he was the safest out of anyone. There were, I did find it kind of funny, and I don't know if this was just Rome poking fun, or this was actually something that he did. But they said that before they had gone into Italy, he had actually had like four or five wigs, that he had dyed different colors. Yeah, he was concerned when they were like wintering with the gulls, that, like, the gulls still weren't totally loyal yet, and that one of them might try to kill him.

and the fucking Rome would fucking reward them. And so, yeah, he had, like, different, like, wigs and would, like, disguise himself and shit. I like to believe that that's true. Oh, yeah. But he did have a pretty big fear of assassination, I think, because he... As he should. There were probably a lot of attempts to do that. Oh, absolutely.

But he has to go back and defend the homeland, and he has to keep this old adversary's son at bay, um, Skipio. And part of Skipio wanting to... to go there was Rome was like, okay, you'll be based in Sicily. You can open up this African front. You can go in there,

maybe see if you can get a dub off these people. And the whole time Hannibal's coming back, they're coming down to try to negotiate, or the Romans are coming down to try to negotiate peace with Carthage. And Carthage is like, oh, shit, we need to stall until Hannibal gets here. Once Hannibal gets here, we can go ahead and make this all work out.

Yeah. So their method of stalling was to ask for all of the What would you call it? Like the rules, the stipulations to peace? Yeah, like the conditions. Conditions, yeah. That's the best word for it.

They asked them, what are the conditions of peace? And they said it was like 5,000 pieces of silver. We're going to cut your boats down to, I think it was like 20 boats in your fleet. You're not allowed to attack. anybody else in five elephants you only get five elephants

the funny condition was they said that you can't come back to where we are so like the Iberian Peninsula or anything but they're like you can go nuts in Africa take over whatever you want in Africa we're drinking everything that was part of this you guys can start moving south don't come back up with us and they're waiting they're waiting finally who shows up Hannibal finally shows up he shows up with the rest of his men that were

still there. There was like scraps that he was getting back from the Iberian Peninsula. There was very few people. They kept a very small standing army in Carthage. It was just like they had hired security. That's what happens when you have such a large territory. You have Iberia over there and moving troops, even if you get troops out, like you still at some point have to get across that eight mile stretch between the pillars of Hercules and you still have to have enough ships. And when you don't have ships, are you building barges and you have to get support? flies and troops and horses, like, it's not quick. You're not going to get those guys back very quickly,

if there are a need to get back at all. So once he gets back in 203, Hannibal meets with Skipio and they try to negotiate peace. That ends up just an utter failure. When they had met, Scipio asked him how he felt about his chances. And he made some vague reference, like I like our chances if we win we win or something along those lines

and Scipio not only was his foe and probably wanted some revenge for his dad he almost became like a student of Hannibal he started to adapt a lot of the things that he would see going on in battles he held him I think in pretty high regard and to hear that there was a little bit of I would say a lack of confidence in his answer to that question almost made him more angry that Hannibal wasn't the guy that he thought that he was. Yeah, I mean, if you're, you got to think, man, if you're, like, coming up through the military and your leading troops,

you're looking at tactics that work and that win battles. You're not looking at the Roman soldiers that lost to the commanders and being like, but I really looked up to him and I'm going to keep trying. If I get his tactics to work, you're going to say, no, like, look at this guy that's been, completely like just kicking our asses. There's something admiral there. You can't, you know, after the first battle,

you can say something like, yeah, this guy just got lucky. These are savages. But then at a certain point, if you have any type of intelligence, you have to look at what this guy's accomplished and been like, this guy knows what he's fucking doing.

This is probably someone I should, to some degree, you know, tactically try to emulate or look up to. But I can see what you're saying. It's like he's probably built him up in his head so much that he wants the guy looking across from him to be that Hannibal that won that battle Kna that was there, you know, that ambushed the troops and know that like if you're going to

fight this guy, it was almost like stealing his thunder, like taking his glory. He's like, I'm getting a muted version of you. Like this is the great commander that Rome was afraid of. You know, Hannibal was so feared in Rome that even after Hannibal, when situations were really dire and there was emergency, they used the saying Hannibal at the gates to describe the severity of situations that they would be going through. That's a legend to have. Yeah. And I'm sure, it almost probably, and this, again, this could be such a Roman spin that they put on it to make

Scipio seem so much better than him. But I could also see Scipio being like, well, I've studied for everything that you've done in the last 15 years. I see your brilliance. I want to take you down, but I also want to take down your A game. Like, I want to take down you at your best. I don't want to just take you out back behind the shed. I don't want my legend to be tarnished that I beat the shadow or the shell or the remnant of Hannibal.

Well, they end up deciding that peace was off the table, and so we come to the Battle of Zarma. Zama. Huh? Z-A-M-A, I believe, isn't it? Zarma. Did I say Zarma? No, R. Zama.

Oh, really? Oh, okay. I think it's Zama. So at this point, Hannibal, despite being in his home, home country has about 40 or 50,000 troops, 36,000 or 46,000 of that is infantry and 4,000 cavalry. So normally what his strength would be the larger version of cavalry, what he won his battles with, he doesn't really have that here.

It was the first time in which during this battle or during this whole war that the parody had kind of been shifted to where Rome actually had the majority of the cavalry and less infantry. They did, however, have 40 war elephants. um, Skipio had 30,000 infantry. They had 80 war elephants. Eight, that's why I said.

Oh, I think he said 40. No, 80. Now, they brought the heat. Oh, yeah. Can you imagine seeing 80 elephants lined up on the other side? 40 on each side. Yeah, I wouldn't want to go against that. Um,

Skipio had 30,000 troops total, 24,000 infantry, but 6,000, a little over 6,000 cavalry. And at this point, too, because they had seen Hannibal's tactics with these elephants, they had gone up against this, they started to develop what can only be called

as anti-war elephant tactics where essentially they would create loud noises, they would blow trumpets, try to go ahead and scare the elephants because like you were saying earlier, if you could get that thing to turn around and panic and it was heading in the other direction, it was just going to fucking mow down anything

in its path trying to get away. Yeah, you just turned down a four-legged cruise missile. So this battle essentially kind of was a kind of a tie going through the entire thing There was a time in which it looked like Hannibal was going to win, but Scipio ends up rallying his troops, and they end up beating the Carthaginians. It ended up being casualties, 20,000 on the Carthaginian side,

and 15,000 additional wounded. So out of that, 50,000, you know, high side 50,000 troops they had, 35,000 of those were knocked out of commission either by being killed or wounded. And so at that point, without being able to go ahead, and make war anymore. Carthage had to capitulate and pretty much accept the terms of the surrender. Terms got worse, too.

Oh, yeah, when you turned down when you're offered deal and you say no to that, and then you can't go back and be like, well, can we get that last one? We'll take the deal. Is it too late? Is that still on the table? Just a little bit. So you would think that like, after

this battle, you know, Hannibal ends up surviving. He's a commander and everything, and there's some decorum when it comes to this. this. So you would think an old warhorse like Hannibal would just, you know, can't fight anymore so he's got to retire, right? That would be the plan for probably 99% of anybody in his position, which I guess there's probably only like three, four people in history that have been in his position. But I think that he really had not only a love for Carthage, but, like, he. think he kind of felt like this whole entire time being a military guy, I'm sure it was drilled

into him by Hamlicar that they're fighting for their people, they're fighting for their country, they're fighting for their kingdom. And if you can't fight on the battle lines because you had to lose, or you had to give up and lose the second Punic War, after losing the first Punic War, you still need to be able to make a difference. And you still, I'm sure, want to start the third Punic War at some point. Yeah, you see your country essentially kind of, of reduced to an inability to kind of of defend itself or to go ahead and take back any

territory or anything like that. So if you're not able to fight on the battlefield, you kind of have to pick a new battlefield. He ends up getting elected what would be considered like a magistrate, like the head magistrate. The chief. The chief magistrate. Basically in charge of life, finances for Carthage. No, in front of all

of Carthage. Not even just finances. He was the guy in Carthage. Oh, really? Yeah. They made him El Prez. And once he got into that role, I know where you're going with it, but they had this giant indemnity that they have to pay back to... A huge amount of war reparations that they had to pay back to Rome, which now falls on his shoulders to try to figure out how to do this. So not only do you lose the battle, now you're

got a front row seat of having to be like watching this money and your resources go out to Rome to try to pay this back. Well, this just goes to show kind of like what kind of mind he had because not only was he effective on the battlefield, but in this role, he ends up finding a way to pay back these reparations, find that Carthage had the funds to do it, without effectively raising any taxes on the people to affect them. So how he did it?

Uh-uh. Oh, yeah, he went after, didn't he end up going after, like, corruption and, like, embezzlement and stuff like that? So he ordered an entire audit of all of the goods that Carthage produces, and he found that all of the political, corruption and all of the guys in the 104 and this other thousand that were kind of

like the, not really oligarchs, but like the major players. What you could consider their version of that? Yeah. They were skimming off the top. So as he goes through and he's matching up the numbers and he's like, well, where's all this extra money going? He ends up tracing it back to them. He's like, oh,

okay. You don't fucking think of financial crime when you're thinking about like the fucking in antiquity and shit like that, but you have this guy who's now like, no, I'm going to fucking sniff out this goddamn corruption, finding all these guys that are taking over this. Not only that, but you've got to look at it from a strategic standpoint of

he has now shown the people that he has gone after this group of people who have essentially been stealing and taking advantage of them. And now he's just even more ingratiated for the populace. He played his hand wrong. because as he did it and he rooted out all this corruption and they found the funds to pay back the indemnity

that they were given 50 years by Rome to pay back. He paid it back with just the money that they were skimming off the top. So he just took their cut and paid off the indemnity loan and along those lines to go with corruption

he had actually changed the voting system to where instead of just being like families in this one thing, thousand that they were actually voted on by the people and that you couldn't or you couldn't serve consecutive terms so you only got a one year term that's right so he's changing this political standpoint or this political landscape yeah landscape and while he's doing that everybody that

he's pissing off is like well we can't have this guy around what do we do yeah we need to go to rome and tell them that he's trying to raise up funds to create another army to come back to you. Well, in the seven years after Zarmah and him being in this position, he essentially just brings Carthage back. He repairs like their economy. He starts to go ahead and kind of build up their

strength again. Rome looks at this and is like, well, shit, do we really want to do a third Punic War? And so like you're saying with maybe someone whispering in their ear, he's suspected of basically helping this guy name Antiochus of the

I try to the celluloids. the cellucid Seleucid Empire So the Seleucid So the Seleucids were basically kind of I read into these guys a little bit So the Seleucids were a country

Or an empire that was founded By one of Alexander's generals When they had branched off And all taking their little chunks of the empire Oh So it was named up And the guy's name was Seleuculus Or something like that

And so it was known as the Seleucid Empire And this Antiochus Jesus I'm sorry guys as Antiochus guy was just the next guy that was that was ruling this or part of the family. So basically because of this little scare that Rome is having, Hannibal's like, I can see the writing on the wall. I've got enemies here in my house basically with these people that I've just stopped their fucking slush fun. And now I got Rome that, you know, how hard would it be for Rome to come down currently right now and just take me? So he goes into a self-imposed exile and kind of,

to almost lend some truth to maybe the rumor that he was dealing with this guy, he ends up going to Greece and meeting up with this guy. Well, he went back home first. He went back and visited Tyre and kind of went on a little tour. He took a farewell tour. Yeah. And basically was like, this was probably the last time I see this place. Peace out, everybody.

I'm heading to Greece. And basically kind of secretly makes his way to Greece and serves as this guy's pretty much military advisor. And I don't know who you could have. I mean, yeah, I know he ended up losing in Zama, but I don't know if you could have anyone with a better record against the Romans. At this point, he was the biggest threat that Roman ever faced in their history. This was a question that I had through most of this.

And this just goes to show how much research we have to do into these. Did somebody beat Rome or did Rome just fall by itself? I think... Fuck. Because we're going to do the Roman episode. We haven't done it yet, but this is our baseline for where we start some of these episodes. Roman ended up weakening itself to the point where it was able to be conquered. I think it was self-inflicted wounds, probably combined with outside influences.

So they conquered a lesser Rome. So you could say that Hannibal gave the Roman Empire its best, their best fight. Up to that point, because technically the Roman Empire, kind of in that first Punic War, was still developing its power. And if you look at kind of the maps that we were looking at, when Rome is at its peak Rome is the Iberian Peninsula it's up all the way up to Europe

they have places in England and Britannia and everything they have all of France they've branched out you know all of the Aegean in Greece and everything it's enormous so this is still him fighting Rome almost kind of been its infancy but still when it's an established

power yes but and up to that point again the the biggest threat they faced up to that point and still to the point where I think that he was probably the biggest threat that Rome had faced until their fall. That was probably the closest they had never come to collapsing. That's the guy you want is your military advisor. Oh, 100%.

Well, Rome and the Seleucid Empire end up going to war, so you get the Roman Seleucid war. And during this time, Hannibal is basically advising this guy. The Seleucids don't do too great after kind of a series of losses. Hannibal's like, you've got to send me out there. Like I'm effective when I'm out there. And so the guy finally is like, okay, I want you to go and create a fleet of ships. You're going to have to do it from scratch, though, because we don't really have anything.

So he has to- We got a pretty good shipbuilding wood. Well, there was a shortage of materials. So they said it took longer than it should have because of all these materials being sent to the currently active war. Oh, no. For him together that they had the best shipbuilders, but it took them a while to build the fleet. It eventually did get done. but it was five years later from the start of this war

before he's even given the authorization to do this. So we come to July of 190 BC. So I mean, we're getting up there. And you get to the Battle of Side where basically Hannibal takes his fleet out and gets into a battle with the Navy of Rhodes, the Rhodian Navy and ends up losing. And after that, it kind of goes,

downhill for the Seleucid Empire, they end up, it doesn't take them much longer because in 189 BC, Rome ends up winning the war and there's some some hairs coming in on the back of Hannibal's neck of like, so Rome

wins this one, I wonder as part of the surrender conditions I think this Antiochus guy might be looking to turn me over to the Romans. Turns out I'm still a pretty big trade chip. Oh yeah, so he ends up, Hannibal's like, you know what? It's been nice here. Later, guys, peace, and he ends up

leaving this place. I'll send you my forwarding address later. Yeah, exactly. Pack my shit up. He ends up going to Crete for a little while and then ends up working his way back to Greece to work for this guy named Prusius of

Bithenia. And at this point, he's just, he's still a hot commodity. He still probably has some of the most military knowledge of anyone in the known world. He's still the guy that took Rome to the brink. So anyone

going against Rome they're going to want him to at least get some of his input. Yeah, pick his brain. Yeah, exactly. He ends up leading another fleet. And I'm trying to remember who they were up against, but he developed a tactic of launching into the other

ships, these giant clay pots full of fucking venomous snakes. How fucking terrifying would that be that like a catapult launches a terra-caught apart and just like, can't? Wait, that's not a cannibol and it breaks open and it's just fucking snakes that pour out all over the fucking deck. I'd hate to be the guy loading the pot. You got to make sure you're, you got a wax seal and that that thing is fun.

I'd hate to be the guy loading the, the guy that has to load those things. You drop one. Yeah. Might as well just start swimming because you're not coming back. No. So he ends up, um, as Rome was still existing at that point for many years after, um, Bethenia ends up losing that war. And at that point, Hannibal has to end up fleeing that place as well.

And that's when a guy named in either 183 or 181. So this is what, seven years later? Yeah. I mean, this is the whole idea of we keep decent records back then, but also there could be a two-year gap when this happened. This guy named Titus Flaminus ends up finding Hannibal in Bethanio. which is in Asia Minor, just in case you didn't listen to our episode on Greece that we did.

The Asia Minor would be essentially across the Aegean and everything. So he's trying to get a little bit further away, but he's on the same continent. And there's a couple different theories. There's some claiming that he was found and killed by Roman troops. Probably the most recognized version of it is that you'll never take me a live coppers. and Hannibal ends up poisoning himself going out on his terms. Well, they think that he had this ring that he had always worn

and it had a compartment on the inside of the ring that had poison in it. That's so fucking badass. Yeah. Like a fucking cyanide capsule. Well, this is where I think that he probably knew that he needed to have a refresher on the poison in there. Because it was the World War I episode when the dudes were swallowing the cyanide capsules. wasn't working. It was just burning the shit out of their inside. It just made him really sick. I'm sure

that he was swapping it in and out pretty frequently to make sure that that didn't happen. But supposedly he heard that they were coming. He knew that him being taken prisoner by the Romans after poking the bear three times, well, slapping the bear in the face. Can you imagine him

getting just, because you know that anybody who captured him and is able to essentially parade the capture or even his fucking body? Well, at that point they'd probably found his body, but to capture the alive Hannibal and parade him and march him down the fucking streets of

Rome and up to the Senate. This is set for life. Seal Team 6 and Bin Laden times like a hundred. Yeah. If they were able to bring Bin Laden back alive. Yeah. You don't want to go down that road. So supposedly he opened up his ring. He dumped his poison and then they found

his body. I like to think he dumped it in some wine stirred it up a little bit and then just pounded it. Yeah, or just got shitface before he did it. But regardless, Rome just couldn't kill this guy. No. He had to do what Rome couldn't do himself. Granted for probably a very smart reason,

but that's a life well-lived to give Romans. The world was big, but he was running out of places to go. Yeah. And at this point, between 66 and 68 years old when he died, at that point, man, you've spent your whole life fighting against these guys. You've got to understand that they haven't been going down, regardless of who you've been trying to team up with.

So you're going to have to go down on your own terms. But, man, to live to almost 70 years old, 15 of your years of which were spent in essentially hostile territory fighting a war, you fought countless battles. I mean... It's a good run. This guy, no wonder, he only has to go by one name. He's like, Cher.

Yeah, it's... I mean, I just don't see how it gets better. than this, but at the same time, he didn't really win the ultimate prize. So I guess that's maybe where Alexander becomes more fun to do. Yeah, we'll find out. I mean, unless this had the ending of him conquering Rome, which would have completely altered the history as we know it of the world and everything like that. It's not like we can be like, oh, we wish you would have won because, yeah, we wouldn't fucking be here and everything. But for this one, guy essentially to basically set Italy on fire and have the largest empire, you know, not at the time,

but the country that would become the largest empire in the world, have them fucking buckling at the knees and just scared to death of this guy, just taken out and annihilating troop legion after legion. It's nuts. I did not expect it to be this much. When we talked about Hannibal, of course, you know, I feel bad. now that what first came to mind was marching fucking his army

and elephants through the fucking Alps but now knowing that that's literally just the fucking that's the tip of the iceberg on this guy. I'm glad we did this topic. Yeah, it's an absolute blast. I don't always fancy myself a super big scholar

I'm more into wrestling history than some other things of history. But as far as ancient history goes and just over the course of doing this podcast, I've found certain things that I really enjoy, like, looking into more and studying on my own free time instead of just studying for an episode or listening to a podcast or watching a documentary on something that we've already covered, but I just want to know more about. This one did not take long to get its hooks in you. Sometimes the research that we do, you've got to kind of force yourself to do some research and then finally you gain an interest in it. From the get-go, as soon as you find out a little bit about this guy, you're just like, okay, I'm in a full clip.

Yeah. Yeah, so we got somehow some more fun conquerors ahead. Oh yeah, we have tons of ways we can branch out from this. We're going to have to talk about Rome, which will be broken up into multiple episodes because of how long that it lasted. We have different people that branch off of this, you know, rulers that come and go and everything. And a lot of people who are going to essentially, you know, at this point, because Alexander was even before this, when we do research on him, we're going to be able to kind of find out maybe some things that Hannibal took from Alexander.

It is very tough, and I know we're rolling deep after the episode, so thanks for continuing to listen, but it's tough to find like a starting point to do any of this stuff in history, and we cross over so much into different episodes with talking about stuff that happened either before or after this. History is so much more of a puzzle where you just kind of find a piece, and then you find another piece, and they start to fit together. It's the Charlie Kelly. Pepe Sylvia thing where you walk in and all the threads and he's like

I gotta talk about the mail and Carol Carol! You just, yeah, you find you're filling in the gaps in between these moments in history and finding out who people were, who they took inspiration from. So we did this guy before we did Alexander and Alexander happened a long time before this guy did. Yeah, exactly. So we still have to go back

in history and kind of see guys that were obviously maybe the inspiration. Yeah. For guys like this that said, look what Alexander did. I think I can do the same or do something similar to it. Absolutely. All right, guys.

Well, thanks for sticking with us for the whole episode. You know the drill, read, review, subscribe, five stars, if you would please. And yeah, love hearing from you guys. Send us your feedback. Your comments. Keep us going. Got anything else, buddy? Uh-uh.

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